with its garden, sheltering wood,
and pleasant rivulet; and there they lived in comfort, with enough to
use and much to spare, their cruse never failing them when wanted. It
was a real cottage, which a labourer had left: there was no ornament
about it till they added some. Rude and unfashioned did this
low-thatched cabin pass to them; it was their own hands, with very
little help from their light purse, which made of a mere hovel the
prettiest of rural dwellings--her own hands, indeed; for Sister Anne
alone was the working-bee. Sister Catherine helped by hints and
smiles, and by her nimble needle; but for out-of-doors labour she had
not strength. Sister Anne nailed up the trellised porch, over which
gay creepers were in time to grow. Sister Anne laid out the beds of
flowers, protected by a low paling from the sheep which pastured on
the downs. She planned the tidy bit of garden on one side, and the
little yard behind, where pig and poultry throve; but Sister Catherine
watched the bee-hives near the hawthorn hedge, and plied her busy
fingers by the hour to decorate the inside of their pretty cottage.
They almost acted man and wife in the division of their employments,
and with the best effect.

It would have astonished any one unaccustomed to the few wants of
simple tastes, and to the many small gains from various trifling
produce which careful industry alone can accumulate, to see the plenty
consequent on skill, order, and neatness. The happiness was a joy
apart, only to be felt by the sort of poetic mind of the truly
benevolent, for it depended not on luxury, or even comfort, or any
purely selfish feeling. It sprang from warm hearts directed by clear
heads, invigorated by religious feelings, and nourished by country
tastes, softened and elevated by the trials of life, till devotion to
their kind became the one intention of their being; for it is as
Sisters of Charity we introduce our heroines to our readers, one of a
wide class in our reformed church, who, unshackled by vows, under no
bondage of conventual forms, with small means, and by their own
exertions and self-sacrifices, do more good in their generation than
can be easily reckoned--treading in the footsteps of their Master,
bearing healing as they move. Every frugal meal was shared with some
one less favoured. No fragments were too small for use in Sister
Anne's most skilful cookery; not a crumb, nor a dreg, nor a drop was
wasted. Many a cup of comfort fed the