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Updated: June 19, 2025
Van Buren went back to Boston, while Aunt Barbara gave all needful directions to Betty with regard to the management of the house, and the garden, and plants, and cellar door, which must be shut nights, and the spot on the roof which sometimes leaked when it rained, and the burdocks and dandelions which must be dug up, and the grass which Uncle Billy Thompson must cut once in two weeks, and the old cat, Tabby, and the young cat, Jim, who had come to the door in a storm, and was now the pet of the house, and the canary bird, and the yeast, and look in the vinegar barrel to see that all was right, and be sure and scald the milk-pans, and turn them up in the sun for an hour, and keep the doors locked, and the silver up in the scuttle-hole; and if she heard the rat which baffled and tormented them so long, get some poison and kill it, but not on any account let it get in the cistern; and keep the door-steps clean, and the stoop, and once in a while sweep the low roof at the back of the house, and not sit up late nights, or sleep very long in the morning; and inasmuch as there would be so little to do, she might as well finish up all her new sewing, and make the pile of sheets and pillow-cases which had been cut out since March.
The old-fashioned awkward sap-gouge was used in tapping in those days, and the "spiles" or spouts were split out of basswood blocks with this gouge, and then sharpened so as to fit the half-round gash which the gouge made in the tree. The dairy milk-pans were used to catch the sap, and huge iron kettles to boil it down in.
These creatures were a great trouble to the girls in their dairy, for the frogs and toads would climb up the walls, and fall squash into the milk-pans. The only way that they could be at all kept out was by having the door sawn asunder three feet from the ground, so that the lower half could be shut while the girls were engaged inside.
She saw the farm again, the muddy pond, her father in a blouse under the apple-trees, and she saw herself again as formerly, skimming with her finger the cream off the milk-pans in the dairy. But in the refulgence of the present hour her past life, so distinct until then, faded away completely, and she almost doubted having lived it.
A low sigh, like a premonition, crept through the heavy atmosphere and shivered among the peach-blossoms. The first gust of wind seized Grandma, returning with the milk-pans.
This place had become inviting by reason of its coolness, and she had rendered it more so by making it perfectly clean and sweet. Strange to say, it contained another chair besides the one she usually occupied. The apartment was large and stone-flagged. Along one side were shelves filled with rows of shining milk-pans.
The walls were black; there was an opening to admit the light above the worm-eaten door; and here and there were a few stools consisting of rough blocks of beech-wood, each set upon three wooden legs; a hutch for bread, a large wooden dipper, a bucket and some earthen milk-pans, a spinning-wheel on the top of the bread-hutch, and a few wicker mats for draining cheeses.
I have always loved the open space and sun, and for two weary years I lived in a dismal room of a dismal house in a particularly dismal street, where there was nothing but mud and smoke, half-paid work, and sickening drudgery. Ralph, I should ten times over sooner wash milk-pans or drive cattle in a sunlit land like this."
Fill them all with cold water half an hour before milking time, and do not pour it out till the moment before you are ready to use the pans. Unless all the utensils are kept perfectly sweet and nice, the cream and butter will never be good. Empty milk-pans should stand all day in the sun.
The door opens into a dark hall or chamber, which serves as a receptacle for rubbish of all kinds fishing-nets, tools, skins, empty milk-pans, and the like; and in the corner is a roughly-built fireplace for boiling the milk and for cooking.
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