ble to read this book;--and as for that troublesome ladder, A. L. O.
E. will not venture to say that she has never had a tumble from it
herself. I need only mention, as regards lame Nelly, that in the end,
after days and weeks of patient labour, her house was very neatly
papered indeed.

Matty had far less trouble. The ladder of Spelling seemed made on
purpose to suit her convenience; she mounted the steps with greater
ease than even the active Dick could do. Her walls were soon covered
with fairies; but, as Lubin observed, no one could think the cottage of
Head well furnished with a paper so poor and thin,--you could almost see
the bricks through it. Matty was, however, well pleased; and even, in
the blindness of self-love, had some hopes of the silver crown. Pride
flattered her skill and her quickness, and was always a welcome guest at
her cottage as well as in Dick's. Neither the brother nor the sister yet
knew the evils that might arise from their using the paste of Emulation.

And how fared poor Lubin meantime? He worked slowly, by fits and starts,
whenever the humour was on him, but it seemed to his brother and sisters
as if his walls would never be papered. Nelly, after her own day's work,
would carry the ladder to Lubin, but he constantly refused to use it.

"What nonsense it is," he would angrily say, "to have words sounded in
one way, and spelt in another. I wish that the fellow who made that
ladder had been well ducked in the brook of Bother."

"But as it _has_ been made, and we've no other," observed Nelly, "would
it not be wise to make the best of it?"

By her gentle persuasion Lubin more than once attempted to mount the
first step, but it always gave way beneath him; he never could remember
of the _to_, _too_, and _two_, which was the right one to use.

At last, catching up the ladder in despair, Lubin flung it out of his
door.

"Let it go--I should like to break it to bits and make a bonfire of it!"
he cried; "I can paper my rooms without it."

"Oh, no; not the upper parts," suggested Nelly.

"I don't care for the upper parts, I'll leave them as they are,"
answered Lubin. "If the bricks and mortar are ugly, no one need look at
them, say I."

"But, Lubin," exclaimed Matty, who had just come in, "you will be quite
ashamed of your house if it be furnished worse than a ploughboy's."

"It will do very well," replied Lubin. "I hate this papering nonsense,
and I wish that Mr. Learning had been far en