We wandered about day after day, in the cool summer sunshine,—so near the ocean that oppressive heat was rare. As soon as breakfast was over, away we went. I was clad in a daily clean blue-and-white checked gingham apron, Harry, although but seven, in long trousers, “like the men.” We romped in barn or garden, visited the corrals or gathered the eggs; we played in the old stage left in the weeds outside the fence, or worked with the tools in the blacksmith shop. When the long tin horn sounded at noon the call for the men’s dinner we returned to the house to be scrubbed. I was put into a white apron for meal time, but back into my regimentals as soon as it was over. A second whitening occurred for supper and lasted until bedtime.
Sometimes we went down to the orchard, where all summer long we could pick ripe apples and pears; and occasionally, as a rare treat, we were allowed to go barefoot and play in the river, reduced to its summer safe level. One day, after having built elaborate sand houses and laid out rival gardens, planted with bits of every shrub and water weed we could find, we went to a place deep enough for us to sit down in water up to our necks, where, grinning over the top of the water, we enjoyed an impromptu bath. We hung our clothes on a willow until they were dry and then wondered what uncanny power made our mothers know that we had been wet.
A half mile or so beyond this ford lived Uncle Marcellus and Aunt Adelaide, and their boys, Edward and Herbert, who used to come over to help at shearing
