All the year round we kept open house, as I remember.
Cousins and aunts were always about, and on holidays friends of all degrees gathered in numbers.

And coming and going in the wing set apart for business guests were merchants, traders, country peddlers, peasants, soldiers, and minor government officials.

It was a full house at all times, and especially so during fairs, and at the season of the military draft.
In the family wing there was also enough going on.

There were four of us children, besides father and mother and grandmother, and the parasitic cousins.

Fetchke was the eldest; I was the second; the third was my only brother, named Joseph, for my father's father; and the fourth was Deborah, named for my mother's mother.
I suppose I ought to explain my own name also, especially because I am going to emerge as the heroine by and by.