THE two little girls received an invitation from a farmer’s wife, who lived in a valley not very far off, to come and see the first cider made.
‘May we go, dear grandmamma, may we go?’ said Alice and Beatrice; ‘we shall like it so much!’
‘I want very much to know how cider is made,’ said Alice.
‘Then you must try and learn all about it to-morrow; and what you do not understand, you must ask Mrs. Laurence to tell you.’
The children were very impatient for to-morrow, and were delighted the next morning to see that it was a fine and sunny day, and very warm.
After their early dinner, the two little girls went with Mary over a low part of the hill, and down a steep road into the valley where Mrs. Laurence lived, who was very glad to see them.
Mrs. Laurence took the children first into her kitchen, a large room where a good fire was burning, although it was so warm out of doors. Mary took off their cloaks, and put them down on a chair in the corner; and Mrs. Laurence took the little girls out of another door, and they walked through her nice little garden, which had a number of beautiful rose trees in full bloom. The farmer’s wife told Alice and Beatrice that her boys liked to keep the garden in order after they had done their farm work, and that they had budded all these roses, and she was very proud of her flowers.
When they came to the large open yard at the back of the house, they saw a number of geese come flying down the hill that rose up all round the yard; and the children stopped to see the geese come one after another with a great noise, and the sound they made with their wings was very loud and very strange; and they asked why it was.
‘It is because the geese are so very heavy, and do not fly much—only now and then, when they want to come quickly to some place,’ said Mrs. Laurence.
‘It is a sign of stormy weather coming,’ said Ellen, Mrs. Laurence’s eldest girl, ‘when the geese fly about and scream so: is it not, mother?’
‘Yes, I have heard so, and I believe that the geese are always right; and I daresay we shall have some bad storms soon.’
‘How do the geese know that there will be stormy weather soon?’ asked Alice.
‘God has given them the sense to see it coming,’ said Mary; ‘and dogs eat grass just before it rains.’
‘But I do not understand,’ said Alice, ‘how the geese see the bad weather coming.’
‘You had better ask your grandmamma, Miss Alice,’ said Mary; ‘she will tell you all about it.’
The little girls then followed Ellen across the yard; it was very dirty and wet, for it had rained the day before; but Ellen took Beatrice in her arms, and showed Alice how to step on several large stones that were there, perhaps on purpose that people might step on them, and not go in the mud or water.
Two pretty dark-red cows, with long slender horns, were standing under an open shed; and Ellen went up to one of them, after she had first brought a clean wooden pail and a little stool, and she sat down on the little stool, and put the pail in front of her knees, and then she milked two streams of white warm milk into the pail, and it was all white froth, like the froth upon the waves, and the cow turned round its head and looked at the children.
They might have been, perhaps, a little afraid; but Ellen said, ‘You may stroke her, miss, she is such a good cow.’
So Alice put out her hand, and rubbed the cow’s head, and patted her.
‘Will you like to give her an apple?’ said Ellen to Alice; and Alice took an apple that Ellen gave her, and went to the cow and held out the apple to her; but when Alice saw the cow’s head come so close to her, and her long tongue put out to take the apple, Alice jumped back, and threw the apple at the cow, who stretched out her neck to reach it, but could not.
‘Why, Alice,’ said little Beatrice, ‘you never gave the cow the apple. Were you afraid?’
‘I did try to give her the apple; but her tongue was so very long, that I was afraid that she would get hold of my hand, so I threw her the apple.’
‘I will pick it up, and give it to the poor cow,’ said Beatrice. ‘Do cows like apples?’ she asked, after she had picked it up and given it to the cow, who ate it very quickly.
‘Yes,’ answered Ellen; ‘cows are very fond of apples, and get plenty of them when they feed in our orchard; and horses and pigs and sheep all like apples.’
After Ellen had milked four cows, and showed the little girls a pretty red calf, and given it a pailful of milk and meal to drink, she took Alice and Beatrice to see the hens and the chickens and the ducks. There were such a number of chickens; and two hens had each a large brood of young chickens. The pond was full of ducks; and Ellen told the little girls that though there were plenty of rats about in the farmyard, and rats are very fond of eating young chickens and ducklings, they never lost any of theirs, for they had two cats that always slept and lived in the hen-house, and the hens were so fond of the cats that sometimes they laid their eggs in the cats’ basket. The cats liked the chickens and little ducks, and never let a rat come near them in the night.
The children begged to see the two good cats, but Ellen said, ‘We will now go to the orchard.’
The orchard was a little way off, up the side of one of the hills, and the sun always shone on the trees, for the hill lay to the south, and was warm and sheltered from all cold winds.
‘What lots of apples!’ cried the two children; ‘the trees are quite full; and why are so many on the ground and in a great heap?’
‘Those are for cider, and are to be taken to our cider press; but will you not have some apples to eat?’ said Ellen, ‘I will show you where some very nice eating apples grow, and I will shake the tree for you.’
They walked farther into the orchard, always going higher and higher up the hill side, and they called out every time when they passed a tree which they thought looked fuller of apples than the others, till they came to a tree which was covered with red apples. This tree Ellen began to shake, and the apples came down in such numbers, and so quickly, that Alice and Beatrice were afraid that the apples would fall on their heads.
‘Will you not pick some,’ said Ellen, ‘and put them in your baskets, and then you can eat what you like?’
Then they went higher still, to the furthest end of the orchard; and there they had a fine view of the sea and all the hills about them, and of the town; and when they had rested up there a little time, and eaten some of their nice apples, they returned with Ellen to the farm-house.
Here they found that a great quantity of apples had been brought, and had been put into a large trough at the back of the house, and a horse was harnessed to a long beam of wood, and the horse went round and round. Ellen showed the two children how the apples slipped down into a large hole, and were crushed inside in a sort of mill; and she let them see how the apples came out of this mill down below; but they did not look like apples, but were brown and soft, and did not look at all nice.
‘Why do they make those nice apples into that nasty mess?’ said Alice.
‘To make cider,’ said Ellen. ‘The apples are crushed to pieces in the mill, and in a short time that nasty muddy stuff will be nice clear cider.’
‘Cider!’ cried Alice; ‘how can such horrid stuff ever be cider?’
‘We let them stand a short time till the juice separates from the thick part, and it ferments, and the juice becomes cider.’
The cider press did not interest the children long; they liked most to go about the farmyard, and help to feed the chickens, and go to the pond and look at the snow-white ducks swimming about in the pond; and whilst they were looking at the ducks putting their heads down deep in the water, Beatrice heard a great grunting behind her, and turned round and called out, ‘Alice! look, what a big pig!’
Alice turned, and saw a very large black pig, with a great many little pigs running after it, all grunting together.
‘How many little pigs are there?’ said Alice, counting them as she spoke. ‘There are ten little pigs; and is that their mother, Ellen?’
‘Yes, Miss Alice; and she is a very good mother to her little ones.’
Alice and Beatrice laughed at the idea that the old black sow, who was grunting about in the farmyard, should be called a good mother.
‘But she is a very good mother,’ said Ellen; ‘for she takes her little pigs into the corn-fields after the harvest, and when she finds some corn on the ground, she calls her little pigs together, and lets them eat it up, and does not eat any herself till she thinks that they have had enough.’
‘I did not think,’ said Alice, ‘that pigs loved their little ones.’
‘Indeed they do, and all animals love their young; and if any one tried to take away one of her ten pigs, the old sow would fly at them, and try to bite them.’
‘But will she bite us?’ asked Beatrice.
‘Oh no; she is very good-tempered, and knows that we will not meddle with her pigs or hurt them.’
After the children had amused themselves in looking at everything, and at last helped Ellen to feed the chickens, they went into the farm-house. Mrs. Laurence had a jug of milk on the table and some glasses, and a loaf of nice brown bread which she told the children she had made and baked herself, and a pat of butter was on a plate, with the figure of a cow on it. Mrs. Laurence gave the children each a glass of milk, and Ellen cut them each a slice of brown bread, and buttered it with the nice butter; and Alice called out that it was a pity that Ellen cut through the shape of the cow, and spread it on her bread.
‘You have a piece of the cow on your bread, Beatrice;’ and Beatrice laughed, and thought it very funny.
Alice and Beatrice thanked Mrs. Laurence and Ellen for the nice bread and butter and milk; for they were very hungry, and it was their tea-time.
Mrs. Laurence gave the children a piece of white honey-comb on a plate, for their grandmamma.
‘Grandmamma has some from her own bees,’ said Alice.
‘I know she has; but my honey has a different taste, for my bees gather their honey from Mutter’s Moor, where there is so much heath and broom, and heath honey is reckoned the best.’
‘I will ask grandmamma to give me some of hers, for hers is very good. Her bees get their honey from her garden flowers, grandmamma says, and from the lime trees.’
Mary put on their cloaks, and told them that their grandmamma had sent two donkeys for them to ride home on; for the farm was rather a long way off their home.
Alice and Beatrice were very glad, because they liked to ride very much, and besides they began to feel tired.
The little girls shook hands with, and bade Mrs. Laurence and Ellen good-bye, and were lifted on to their donkeys; and Mary walked by the side of Beatrice’s donkey, and held her donkey’s bridle, and thus they reached their own pretty home on the hill, and found grandmamma waiting for them at the door.
Alice and Beatrice told grandmamma about everything they had seen and done, and were soon glad to go to bed.
