the house, so that
there was nobody to look in.

On the back side of the room, in one corner, was the bed. It was
supported upon a bedstead which Albert had made. The bedstead had high
posts, and was covered, like the window, with curtains. In the other
corner was the place for the loom, with the spinning-wheel between the
loom and the bed. When Mary Erskine was using the spinning-wheel,
she brought it out into the center of the room. The loom was not yet
finished. Albert was building it, working upon it from time to time as
he had opportunity. The frame of it was up, and some of the machinery
was made.

Mary Erskine kept most of her clothes in a trunk; but Albert was
making her a bureau.

Instead of finding it lonesome at her new home, as Mrs. Bell had
predicted, Mary Erskine had plenty of company. The girls from the
village, whom she used to know, were very fond of coming out to see
her. Many of them were much younger than she was, and they loved to
ramble about in the woods around Mary Erskine's house, and to play
along the bank of the brook. Mary used to show them too, every time
they came, the new articles which Albert had made for her, and to
explain to them the gradual progress of the improvements. Mary Bell
herself was very fond of going to see Mary Erskine,--though she was of
course at that time too young to go alone. Sometimes however Mrs. Bell
would send her out in the morning and let her remain all day, playing,
very happily, around the door and down by the spring. She used to play
all day among the logs and stumps, and upon the sandy beach by the
side of the brook, and yet when she went home at night she always
looked as nice, and her clothes were as neat and as clean as when she
went in the morning. Mrs. Bell wondered at this, and on observing that
it continued to be so, repeatedly, after several visits, she asked
Mary Bell how it happened that Mary Erskine kept her so nice.

"Oh," said Mary Bell, "I always put on my working frock when I go out
to Mary Erskine's."

The working frock was a plain, loose woolen dress, which Mary Erskine
made for Mary Bell, and which Mary Bell, always put on in the morning,
whenever she came to the farm. Her own dress was taken off and
laid carefully away upon the bed, under the curtains. Her shoes and
stockings were taken off too, so that she might play in the brook if
she pleased, though Mary Erskine told her it was not best to remain in
the water long enough to have