CIDER-MAKING.
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.
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