I remember it well, because of two things.  First, that Jem got five of the largest hips we had ever seen off a leafless dog-rose branch which stuck far out of the hedge, and picked the little green coronets off, so that they were smooth and glossy, and egg-shaped, and crimson on one side and yellow on the other; and then he got an empty chaffinch’s nest close by and put the five hips into it, and took it home, and persuaded Alice our new parlourmaid that it was a robin redbreast’s nest with eggs in it.  And she believed it, for she came from London and knew no better.

The second thing I remember that autumn by, is that everybody expected a hard winter because of the berries being so fine, and the hard winter never came, and the birds ate worms and grubs and left most of the hedge fruits where they were.

November was bright and mild, and the morning frosts only made the berries all the glossier when the sun came out.  We had one or two snow-storms in December, and then we all said, “Now it’s coming!” but the snow melted away and left no bones behind.  In January the snow lay longer, and left big bones on the moors, and Jem and I made a slide to school on the pack track, and towards the end of the month the mill-dam froze hard, and we had slides fifteen yards long, and skating; and Winter seemed to have come back in good earnest to fetch his bones away.

Jem was great fun in frosty weather; Charlie and I used to die of laughing at him.  I think cold made him pugnacious; he seemed always ready for a row, and was constantly in one.  The January frost came in our Christmas holidays, so Jem had lots of time on his hands; he spent almost all of it out of doors, and he devoted a good deal of it to fighting with the rough lads of the village.  There was a standing subject of quarrel, which is a great thing for either tribes or individuals who have a turn that way.  A pond at the corner of the lower paddock was fed by a stream which also fed the mill-dam; and the mill-dam was close by, though, as it happened, not on my father’s property.  Old custom made the mill-dam the winter resort of all the village sliders and skaters, and my father displayed a good deal of toleration when those who could not find room for a new slide, or wished to practise their “outer edge” in a quiet spot, came climbing over the wall (there was no real thoroughfare) and invaded our pond.

Perhaps it is because gratitude is a fatiguing virtue, or perhaps it is because self-esteem has no practical limits, that favours are seldom regarded as such for long.  They are either depreciated, or claimed as rights; very often both.  And what is common in all classes is almost universal amongst the uneducated.  You have only to make a system of giving your cast-off clothes to some shivering family, and you will not have to wait long for an eloquent essay on their shabbiness, or for an outburst of sincere indignation if you venture to reserve a warm jacket for a needy relative.