garden were pushing through the brown earth, softened by April rains,
and there was a shimmer of sunshine over the wide landscape that made
every familiar object beautiful with hints of spring, and the activity
it brings.

Something made the old nursery hymn come into Merry's head, and humming
to herself,

"In works of labor or of skill
I would be busy too,"

she tied on her cap, shouldered her broom, and fell to work so
energetically that she soon swept her way through the chambers, down the
front stairs to the parlor door, leaving freshness and order behind her
as she went.

She always groaned when she entered that apartment, and got out of it
again as soon as possible, for it was, like most country parlors, a prim
and chilly place, with little beauty and no comfort. Black horse-hair
furniture, very slippery and hard, stood against the wall; the table had
its gift books, albums, worsted mat and ugly lamp; the mantel-piece its
china vases, pink shells, and clock that never went; the gay carpet was
kept distressingly bright by closed shutters six days out of the seven,
and a general air of go-to-meeting solemnity pervaded the room. Merry
longed to make it pretty and pleasant, but her mother would allow of no
change there, so the girl gave up her dreams of rugs and hangings, fine
pictures and tasteful ornaments, and dutifully aired, dusted, and shut
up this awful apartment once a week, privately resolving that, if she
ever had a parlor of her own, it should not be as dismal as a tomb.

The dining-room was a very different place, for here Merry had been
allowed to do as she liked, yet so gradual had been the change, that she
would have found it difficult to tell how it came about. It seemed to
begin with the flowers, for her father kept his word about the "posy
pots," and got enough to make quite a little conservatory in the
bay-window, which was sufficiently large for three rows all round, and
hanging-baskets overhead. Being discouraged by her first failure, Merry
gave up trying to have things nice everywhere, and contented herself
with making that one nook so pretty that the boys called it her
"bower." Even busy Mrs. Grant owned that plants were not so messy as she
expected, and the farmer was never tired of watching "little daughter"
as she sat at work there, with her low chair and table full of books.

The lamp helped, also, for Merry set up her own, and kept it so well
trimmed that it burned clear and br