Nutting

“I do not know how it is,” said his brother one day: “when I go out with Robert nutting, he gets all the nuts; and when I go out rabbiting, he gets all the rabbits; and when we go out fishing together, he catches all the fish.”

The younger people had their berrying frolics, sleigh-rides, kitchen dances, nuttings, and the like, and their elders their huskings, apple bees, and sewing societies, but against all these the deacon set his hard face.

Now another drop genius is planted upon you, to turn you up, as they call it: He tells you that he is going to receive fifty pounds of an uncle, and if you will go with him he will let you have ten or twenty pounds, and meet the squire at such a house in such a street and play with him, himself and you shall go halves, if you will persuade the squire to come to this place appointed; this is called nutting of you.

After the party had wound up, I did a bit of hard nutting over my plans for trotting.