he board in a conspicuous place
upon a shelf, where the two good letters could be seen by all in the
room. Bella was much pleased at this, and she came in from her play
several times in the course of the day, to look at her letters and to
call them by name.

When Bella's board had thus been put up in its conspicuous position,
Mary Bell sat down to finish her drawing, while Bella went out to
pick up her two baskets of chips. Mary Bell worked upon her house for
nearly the whole of another half hour. When it was finished she cut
the part of the paper which it was drawn upon off from the rest, and
ruled around it a neat margin of double black lines. She obtained a
narrow strip of wood, from the shop which served her as a ruler. She
said that she meant to have all her drawing lessons of the same size,
and to put the same margin around them. She marked her house No. 1,
writing the numbering in a small but plain hand on one corner. She
wrote the initials of her, name, M.B., in the same small hand, on the
opposite corner.

Mary Erskine did not attempt _her_ lesson until the evening. She
finished her work about the house a little after eight o'clock, and
then she undressed the children and put them to bed. By this time it
was nearly nine o'clock. The day had been warm and pleasant, but the
nights at this season were cool, and Mary Erskine put two or three dry
sticks upon the fire, before she commenced her work, partly for the
warmth, and partly for the cheerfulness of the blaze.

She lighted her lamp, and sat down at her work-table, with Mary Bell's
copy, and her pen, ink, and paper, before her. The copy had been
pinned up in sight all the day, and she had very often examined it,
when passing it, in going to and fro at her work. She had thus learned
the names of all the letters in the word Mary, and had made herself
considerably familiar with the forms of them; so that she not only
knew exactly what she had to do in writing the letters, but she felt a
strong interest in doing it. She, however, made extremely awkward
work in her first attempts at writing the letters. She, nevertheless,
steadily persevered. She wrote the words, first in separate letters,
and then afterwards in a joined hand, again and again, going down the
paper. She found that she could write a little more easily, if not
better, as she proceeded,--but still the work was very hard. At ten
o'clock her paper was covered with what she thought were miserable
scraw