nce which separated the sidewalk from her front
yard newly painted. She had long wanted to have that done, but had not
been able to afford it.

But when Mr. Thompson went to look at the fence, he told her that it
would be really a waste of money to paint it, for in many places it was
old and decayed, and it would be much wiser to put up a new one and
paint that.

Again Mrs. Cliff hesitated. If that fence had to be taken down, and the
posts dug up, and new posts put in, and the flower-bed which ran along
the inside of it destroyed, it would be just as well to wait until the
other work began and have it all done at once; so she told Mr. Thompson
he need not send a painter, for she would make the old fence do for a
while.

Mrs. Cliff sighed a little as the carpenter walked away, but there were
other things to do. There was the pasture lot at the rear of her garden,
and she could have a cow, and there was the little barn, and she could
have a horse. The idea of the horse pleased her more than anything she
had yet thought of in connection with her wealth.

In her days of prosperity it had been her greatest pleasure to drive in
her phaeton with her good brown horse, generally with Willy Croup by her
side; to stop at shops or to make calls upon friends, and to make those
little excursions into the surrounding country in which she and Willy
both delighted. They had sometimes gone a long distance and had taken
their dinner with them, and Willy was really very good in unharnessing
the horse and watering him at a brook, and in giving him some oats.

To return to these old joys was a delightful prospect, and Mrs. Cliff
made inquiries about her horse, which had been sold in the town; but he
was gone. He had been sold to a drover, and his whereabouts no one knew.

So she went to Mr. Williams, the keeper of the hotel, who knew more
about horses than anybody else, and consulted with him on the subject of
a new steed. She told him just what she wanted: a gentle horse which
she could drive herself, and one which Willy could hold when she went
into a house or a shop.

Now, it so happened that Mr. Williams had just such a horse, and when
Mrs. Cliff had seen it, and when Willy had come up to look at it, and
when the matter had been talked about in all the aspects in which it
presented itself to Mrs. Cliff's mind, she bought the animal, and it was
taken to her stable, where Andrew Marks, a neighbor, was engaged to take
care of it.