It was not long after my father had "gone before" that we removed
from the old house in the Anchor Close.
Much of our familiar furniture was sold. My boat, too, was disposed
of. Many a heart pang it cost us to leave the home at the
waterside, but we all took kindly to the new life at the farm and
its various duties. Jessie soon became skilled in the work of
attending to the cows; and as for myself, I readily learned how to
mend a gate, to dig potatoes, to look after the sheep, and even to
follow the plough. Thus I busied myself until, in after-time, I was
able to take to the sea.
When the warm weather came round, the boys and girls of Andrew
Drever's school were dismissed for their holidays. Sometimes, when
I saw some of them passing along the cliffs with their climbing
ropes over their arms, I confess I felt some twinge of regret that
I was no longer a schoolboy, and that my duties on the farm no
longer permitted me to join in the pleasures of a bird-catching
expedition. My fowling piece was now hung up in the barn, and few
were my opportunities of taking it down. What sport it would have
afforded me had I been still a schoolboy!
On a certain fine morning, soon after the holidays commenced, I was
very busily employed at the work of helping in our sheep
shearing--not that I myself ventured to handle the shears; my part
in the business was simply to carry the wool into the loft, and to
assist in bringing out the sheep from the pens as the shearers
required them.
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