lady, when she died, bequeathed her a
caudle-cup, a soup-dish, two beakers, and a chest of table-linen spun
by herself.

Mr. Busy, finding the economical qualities of his lady, resigned his
affairs wholly into her hands, and devoted his life to his pointers and
his hounds. He never visited his estates but to destroy the partridges
or foxes; and often committed such devastations in the rage of pleasure,
that some of his tenants refused to hold their lands at the usual rent.
Their landlady persuaded them to be satisfied, and entreated her husband
to dismiss his dogs, with many exact calculations of the ale drunk by
his companions, and corn consumed by the horses, and remonstrances
against the insolence of the huntsman, and the frauds of the groom. The
huntsman was too necessary to his happiness to be discarded; and he had
still continued to ravage his own estate, had he not caught a cold and a
fever by shooting mallards in the fens. His fever was followed by a
consumption, which in a few months brought him to the grave.

Mrs. Busy was too much an economist to feel either joy or sorrow at his
death. She received the compliments and consolations of her neighbours
in a dark room, out of which she stole privately every night and morning
to see the cows milked; and after a few days declared that she thought a
widow might employ herself better than in nursing grief; and that, for
her part, she was resolved that the fortunes of her children should not
be impaired by her neglect.

She therefore immediately applied herself to the reformation of abuses.
She gave away the dogs, discharged the servants of the kennel and
stable, and sent the horses to the next fair, but rated at so high a
price that they returned unsold. She was resolved to have nothing idle
about her, and ordered them to be employed in common drudgery. They lost
their sleekness and grace, and were soon purchased at half the value.

She soon disencumbered herself from her weeds, and put on a riding-hood,
a coarse apron, and short petticoats, and has turned a large manour into
a farm, of which she takes the management wholly upon herself. She rises
before the sun to order the horses to their gears, and sees them well
rubbed down at their return from work; she attends the dairy morning and
evening, and watches when a calf falls that it may be carefully nursed;
she walks out among the sheep at noon, counts the lambs, and observes
the fences, and, where she finds a gap