“There’s hay and straw and corn fodder enough to last over until pasture is growing again. I’d advise you to sell the two old cows, the two young ones (one calves in April, the other in September) will be enough for you to manage. _Of course_ you’ll keep Billy; you’d be stuck fast here on the hill like moss on a rock but for him. There’s no earthly reason why Adam can’t learn to curry him, and milk too after a spell; but Larsen is engaged until April, when he expects to be married, and work on one of the great estates in Gordon. He works for me three hours a day in winter, just the milking and chores morning and night. I pay him ten dollars a month; the Fentons keep him the rest of the time, and pay him fifteen dollars and board, for, of course, I couldn’t board a man here!” Brooke did not appreciate the exact reason, but did not say so, and Miss Keith continued: “After the 1st of April, Adam ought to be well broken in, and you can doubtless get a man to plot out the garden, and work the corn lot, the potato, hay, and rye fields on shares. I’ll speak to Mr. Bisbee and the blacksmith about that before I go, and tell them to keep their eyes open for one.” “Don’t you think that three dollars a week is very small pay for a woman such as Mrs. Peck appears to be, from what you say?” said Brooke, unthinkingly, her old habits of generosity being yet strong upon her. “Brooke Lawton, if you are going to bring your ideas of city wages and charitable reforms up here, you’ll make trouble for others, as well as for yourself,” snapped Miss Keith, vehemently. “That is her price, set by herself, and you can’t afford to change it for one thing (you’re good to eat on your principal these first three months anyhow); and suppose you could, what good would it do her, but make her discontented with what others could pay, and humble them? People ought to hesitate before they upset the wages of a place they come into new. Half such charity is selfish gratification, to my thinking. There was old John Selleck; he used to do little garden chores for fifty cents a day and food,—light work with frequent resting spells. Along comes a city man and hires a cottage on the lower road for two months. Said it was a shame to ‘underpay the labourer,’ gives him a dollar and a half a day. When the two months were over, and he left again, would John Selleck chore about for fifty cents a day and food? Not he, so, as nobody would pay him more, and he wouldn’t work for less, he nearly starved last autumn, and now he’s working on the town farm for board without the fifty cents!”