noon
But at the old Squire 's we usually kept a flock of eighty or a hundred . They often brought us no real profit , but grandmother Ruth was an old-fashioned housewife who would have felt herself bereaved if she had had no woolen yarn for socks and bed blankets . The sheep were already at the barn for the winter ; it was the 12th of December , though as yet we had had no snow that remained long on the ground . We were cutting firewood out in the lot that day and came in at noon with good appetites , for the air was sharp . While we sat at table a stranger drove up . He said that his name was Morey , and that he was stocking a farm which he had recently bought in the town of Lovell , nineteen or twenty miles west of our place . `` I want to buy a flock of sheep , '' he said .