A Busy Year at the Old Squire's

At the old Squire's Maine home, a winter school term brings maps, music and a teacher determined to make every pupil care about learning. C. A. Stephens tells this farm novel through a narrator looking back on life among cousins, neighbors and grandparents. Master Joel Pierson arrives with a melodeon and geography charts, then carries his enthusiasm into evening study sessions in the sitting room. Latin lessons share the hours with apples, popcorn, arguments and Halstead's pranks.

Farm work provides a different kind of test. During haymaking, grandmother Ruth insists on arranging the last cartload herself, taking a practical suggestion as a challenge to her skill. The scene turns the difficulties of handling loose hay into a family comedy of pride and persistence. Readers interested in rural Maine or older school customs will find concrete details of both, along with a child's view of the adults whose energy shapes the household.