it
that I now possess--trifling as that may be.

However, that haven of bliss must not be entered till I had exchanged my
miry boots for a clean pair of shoes, and my rough surtout for a
respectable coat, and made myself generally presentable before decent
society; for my mother, with all her kindness, was vastly particular on
certain points.

In ascending to my room I was met upon the stairs by a smart, pretty girl
of nineteen, with a tidy, dumpy figure, a round face, bright, blooming
cheeks, glossy, clustering curls, and little merry brown eyes. I need
not tell you this was my sister Rose. She is, I know, a comely matron
still, and, doubtless, no less lovely--in your eyes--than on the happy
day you first beheld her. Nothing told me then that she, a few years
hence, would be the wife of one entirely unknown to me as yet, but
destined hereafter to become a closer friend than even herself, more
intimate than that unmannerly lad of seventeen, by whom I was collared in
the passage, on coming down, and well-nigh jerked off my equilibrium, and
who, in correction for his impudence, received a resounding whack over
the sconce, which, however, sustained no serious injury from the
infliction; as, besides being more than commonly thick, it was protected
by a redundant shock of short, reddish curls, that my mother called
auburn.

On entering the parlour we found that honoured lady seated in her
arm-chair at the fireside, working away at her knitting, according to her
usual custom, when she had nothing else to do. She had swept the hearth,
and made a bright blazing fire for our reception; the servant had just
brought in the tea-tray; and Rose was producing the sugar-basin and
tea-caddy from the cupboard in the black oak side-board, that shone like
polished ebony, in the cheerful parlour twilight.

'Well! here they both are,' cried my mother, looking round upon us
without retarding the motion of her nimble fingers and glittering
needles. 'Now shut the door, and come to the fire, while Rose gets the
tea ready; I'm sure you must be starved;--and tell me what you've been
about all day;--I like to know what my children have been about.'

'I've been breaking in the grey colt--no easy business that--directing
the ploughing of the last wheat stubble--for the ploughboy has not the
sense to direct himself--and carrying out a plan for the extensive and
efficient draining of the low meadowlands.'

'That's my brave boy!--and Fergus,