of these, and
never ends a letter to a Merleville crony without an earnest adjuration
to "come over and help us." But on the whole, it is believed that, in
his heart, Deacon Fish will not repine while the grain grows and the
markets prosper.

Mr Page is growing rich, they say, which is a change indeed. His
nephew, Timothy, having invented a wonderful mowing or reaping-machine,
Mr Page has taken out a patent for the same, and is growing rich. Mrs
Page enjoys it well, and goes often to Rixford, where she has her gowns
and bonnets made now; and patronises young Mrs Merle, and young Mrs
Greenleaf, and does her duty generally very much to her own
satisfaction, never hearing the whispered doubts of her old friends--
which are audible enough, too--whether she is as consistent as she ought
to be, and whether, on the whole, her new prosperity is promoting her
growth in grace.

Becky Pettimore has got a home of her own, and feels as if she knows how
to enjoy it. And so she does, if to enjoy it means to pick her own
geese, and spin her own wool, and set her face like a flint against the
admission of a speck of dirt within her own four walls. But it is
whispered among some people, wise in these matters, that there is
something going to happen in Becky's home, which may, sometime or other,
mar its perfect neatness, without, however, marring Becky's enjoyment of
it. It may be so, for hidden away in the corner of one of her many
presses, is a little pillow of down, upon which no mortal head has ever
rested, and which no eyes but Becky's own have ever seen; and they fill
with wonder and tenderness whenever they fall upon it; and so there is a
chance that she may yet have more of home's enjoyments than geese or
wool or dustless rooms can give.

Behind the elms, where the old brown house stood, stands now a
snow-white cottage, with a vine-covered porch before it. It is neat
without and neat within, though often there are children's toys and
little shoes upon the floor. At this moment there is on the floor a row
of chairs overturned, to make, not horses and carriages as they used to
do in my young days, but a train of cars, and on one of them sits Arthur
Elliott Greenleaf, representing at once engine, whistle, conductor and
freight. And no bad representative either, as far as noise is
concerned, and a wonderful baby that must be who sleeps in the cradle
through it all. Beside the window, unruffled amid the uproar, sits
Cele