the brook: for the shower would always begin to fall the instant the
dipper was lifted out of the water.

[Illustration: MARY BELL AT THE BROOK.]

After watering her garden again and again, Mary Bell concluded on the
whole not to wait for her potatoes to grow, but dug them up and began
to wash them in the brook, to make them ready for the roasting. Her
little feet sank into the sand at the margin of the water while she
held the potatoes in the stream, one in each hand, and watched the
current as it swept swiftly by them. After a while she took them out
and put them in the sun upon a flat stone to dry, and when they were
dry she carried them to her oven and buried them in the hot embers
there.

Thus Mary Bell would amuse herself, hour after hour of the long
day, when she went to visit Mary Erskine, with an endless variety of
childish imaginings. Her working-frock became in fact, in her mind,
the emblem of complete and perfect liberty and happiness, unbounded
and unalloyed.

The other children of the village, too, were accustomed to come out
and see Mary Erskine, and sometimes older and more ceremonious company
still. There was one young lady named Anne Sophia, who, having been
a near neighbor of Mrs. Bell's, was considerably acquainted with Mary
Erskine, though as the two young ladies had very different tastes and
habits of mind, they never became very intimate friends. Anne Sophia
was fond of dress and of company. Her thoughts were always running
upon village subjects and village people, and her highest ambition
was to live there. She had been, while Mary Erskine had lived at Mrs.