een promoted
to a cap, which added the grace of a flourish to his bow; Bessy had
added the luxury of a pinafore to her nondescript garments; and both
pairs of little feet were advanced to the certain dignity, although
somewhat equivocal comfort, of shoes and stockings.

The world had gone well with them, and with their parents. The house was
built. Upon remounting the hill, and advancing a little farther into the
centre of the Moss, we saw the comfortable low-browed cottage, full of
light and shadow, of juttings out, and corners and angles of every sort
and description, with a garden stretching along the side, backed and
sheltered by the tall impenetrable plantation, a wall of trees, against
whose dark masses a wreath of light smoke was curling, whose fragrance
seemed really to perfume the winter air. The pig had been bought,
fatted, and killed; but other pigs were inhabiting the sty, almost as
large as their former dwelling, which stood at the end of their garden;
and the children told with honest joy how all this prosperity had come
about. Their father, taking some brooms to my kind friend Lady Denys,
had seen some of the ornamental baskets used for flowers upon a lawn,
and had been struck with the fancy of trying to make some, decorated
with fir cones; and he had been so successful in this profitable
manufacture, that he had more orders than he could execute. Lady Denys
had also, with characteristic benevolence, put the children to her
Sunday-school. One misfortune had a little overshadowed the sunshine.
Squire Benson had died, and the consent to the erection of the cottage
being only verbal, the attorney who managed for the infant heir, a
ward in Chancery, had claimed the property. But the matter had been
compromised upon the payment of such a rent as the present prospects
of the family would fairly allow. Besides collecting fir cones for the
baskets, they picked up all they could in that pine forest, (for it was
little less,) and sold such as were discoloured, or otherwise unfit for
working up, to Lady Denys and other persons who liked the fine aromatic
odour of these the pleasantest of pastilles, in their dressing-room or
drawing-room fires. "Did I like the smell? We had a cart there--might
they bring us a hamper-ful?" And it was with great difficulty that a
trifling present (for we did not think of offering money _as payment_)
could be forced upon the grateful children. "We," they said, "had been
their first frie