A year is but a harvest.

After the ploughing and sowing and cleaning, the reaping and thatching and threshing, what is there left of the twelvemonth?
It has gone like a day.

Thus it is that a farmer talks of twenty years since as if it was only last week, and seems unable to grasp the flight of time till it is marked and emphasised by some exceptional occurrence.

Cicely meant to wake her uncle from this slumber.
We started early on a beautiful July morning--partly to avoid the heat, and partly because Cicely wished to be away when young Aaron shortened the tails of the puppies in the rickyard.

(This he did in the old-fashioned way, with his teeth.) Besides we thought that, if we waited till later, Uncle Bennet might be gone to market at Overboro'.
We passed several farmers leaning or sitting on the stiles by the road, watching for a friend to come along and give them a lift into town.