The most salient of the shepherd's domestic erections was an empty
sty at the forward corner of his hedgeless garden, for in these
latitudes the principle of masking the homelier features of your
establishment by a conventional frontage was unknown. The traveller's
eye was attracted to this small building by the pallid shine of
the wet slates that covered it. He turned aside, and, finding it
empty, stood under the pentroof for shelter.
While he stood, the boom of the serpent within and the lesser
strains of the fiddler reached the spot, as an accompaniment to
the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating
on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives
just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into
a row of buckets and pans that had been placed under the walls
of the cottage; for at Higher Crowstairs, as at all such elevated
domiciles, the grand difficulty of housekeeping was an insufficiency
of water, and a casual rainfall was utilised by turning out as catchers
every utensil that the house contained. Some queer stories might be
told of the contrivances for economy in suds and dish-waters that
are absolutely necessitated in upland habitations during the
droughts of summer.
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