the effect was very agreeable in the end. The house and all about it
formed, in time, an enchanting picture of rural beauty.[A]

[Footnote A: See Frontispiece.]

It was, however, only a few occasional hours of recreation that Mary
Erskine devoted to ornamenting her dwelling. The main portion of her
time and attention was devoted to such industrial pursuits as were
most available in bringing in the means of support for herself and her
children, so as to leave untouched the income from her house and her
bridge shares. This income, as fast as it was paid in, she deposited
with Mr. Keep, to be lent out on interest, until a sufficient sum was
thus accumulated to make a new investment of a permanent character.
When the sum at length amounted to two hundred and twenty dollars, she
bought two more bridge shares with it, and from that time forward
she received dividends on six shares instead of four; that is, she
received thirty dollars every six months, instead of twenty, as
before.

One reason why Mary Erskine invested her money in a house and in a
bridge, instead of lending it out at interest, was that by so doing,
her property was before her in a visible form, and she could take a
constant pleasure in seeing it. Whenever she went to the village
she enjoyed seeing her house, which she kept in a complete state of
repair, and which she had ornamented with shrubbery and trees, so that
it was a very agreeable object to look upon of itself, independently
of the pleasure of ownership. In the same manner she liked to see the
bridge, and think when teams and people were passing over it, that a
part of all the toll which they paid, would, in the end, come to her.
She thus took the same kind of pleasure in having purchased a house,
and shares in a bridge, that any lady in a city would take in an
expensive new carpet, or a rosewood piano, which would cost about the
same sum; and then she had all the profit, in the shape of the annual
income, besides.

There was one great advantage too which Mary Erskine derived from
owning this property, which, though she did not think of it at all
when she commenced her prudent and economical course, at the time of
her marriage, proved in the end to be of inestimable value to her.
This advantage was the high degree of respectability which it gave her
in the public estimation. The people of the village gradually found
out how she managed, and how fast her property was increasing, and
they enterta