wash them down at the brook."

"I am afraid that I shall get my fingers smutty," said Mary Bell, "at
my oven, for the stump is pretty black."

"No matter if you do," said Mary Erskine. "You can go down and wash
them at the brook."

"And my frock, too," said Mary Bell.

"No matter for that either," said Mary Erskine; "only keep it as clean
as you can."

So Mary Bell took the two potatoes and went down to the brook to wash
them. She found, however, when she reached the brook, that there was
a square piece of bark lying upon the margin of the water, and she
determined to push it in and sail it, for her ship, putting the two
potatoes on for cargo. After sailing the potatoes about for some time,
her eye chanced to fall upon a smooth spot in the sand, which she
thought would make a good place for a garden. So she determined to
_plant_ her potatoes instead of roasting them.

She accordingly dug a hole in the sand with her fingers, and put the
potatoes in, and then after covering them, over with the sand, she
went to the oven to get her fire-pan for her watering-pot, in order to
water her garden.

The holes in the bottom of the dipper made it an excellent
watering-pot, provided the garden to be watered was not too far from
the brook: for the shower would always begin to fall the instant the
dipper was lifted out of the water.

[Illustration: MARY BELL AT THE BROOK.]

After watering her garden again and again, Mary Bell concluded on the
whole not to wait for her potatoes to grow, but dug them up and began
to wash them in the brook, to make them ready for the roasting. Her
little feet sank into the sand at the margin of the water while she
held the potatoes in the stream, one in each hand, and watched the
current as it swept swiftly by them. After a while she took them out
and put them in the sun upon a flat stone to dry, and when they were
dry she carried them to her oven and buried them in the hot embers
there.

Thus Mary Bell would amuse herself, hour after hour of the long
day, when she went to visit Mary Erskine, with an endless variety of
childish imaginings. Her working-frock became in fact, in her mind,
the emblem of complete and perfect liberty and happiness, unbounded
and unalloyed.

The other children of the village, too, were accustomed to come out
and see Mary Erskine, and sometimes older and more ceremonious company
still. There was one young lady named Anne Sophia, who, having been
a near neighbor o