ing the landscape, and a few picturesque old red
brick cottages scattered about here and there.

Such a drive to such a scene, reader, may seem very commonplace to you,
but what tongue can tell, or pen describe, what it was to Tottie Bones?
That pretty little human flower had been born in the heart of London--in
one of the dirtiest and most unsavoury parts of that heart. Being the
child of a dissolute man and a hard-working woman, who could not afford
to go out excursioning, she had never seen a green field in her life.
She had never seen the Thames, or the Parks. There are many such
unfortunates in the vast city. Of flowers--with the exception of
cauliflowers--she knew nothing, save from what little she saw of them in
broken pots in the dirty windows of her poor neighbourhood, and on the
barrows and baskets of the people who hawked them about the city. There
was a legend among the neighbours of Archangel Court that once upon a
time--in some remote period of antiquity--a sunbeam had been in the
habit of overtopping the forest of chimneys and penetrating the court
below in the middle of each summer, but a large brick warehouse had been
erected somewhere to the southward, and had effectually cut off the
supply, so that sunshine was known to the very juvenile population only
through the reflecting power of roofs and chimney-cans and gable
windows. In regard to scents, it need scarcely be said that Tottie had
had considerable experience of that class which it is impossible to term
sweet.

Judge then, if you can, what must have been the feelings of this little
town-sparrow when she suddenly rushed, at the rate of forty miles an
hour, into the heavenly influences of fields and flowers, hedgerows, and
trees, farm-yards and village spires, horse-ponds, country inns, sheep,
cattle, hay-carts, piggeries, and poultry.

Her eyes, always large and liquid, became great crystal globes of
astonishment, as, forgetful of herself, and _almost_ of baby, she sat
with parted lips and heaving breast, gazing in rapt ecstasy from the
carriage window.

Miss Stivergill and Miss Lillycrop, being sympathetic souls, gazed with
almost equal interest on the child's animated face.

"She only wants wings and washing to make her an angel," whispered the
former to the latter.

But if the sights she saw on the journey inflated Tottie's soul with
joy, the glories of Rosebud Cottage almost exploded her. It was a
marvellous cottage. Rosebushes s