ls, and her wrist and her fingers ached excessively. She put her
work away, and prepared to go to bed.

"Perhaps I shall have to give it up after all," said she. "But I will
not give up till I am beaten. I will write an hour every day for six
months, and then if I can not write my name so that people can read
it, I will stop."

The next day about an hour after breakfast Mary Erskine had another
school for the children. Bella took the two next letters _c_ and
_d_ for her lesson, while Mary Bell took the swing hanging from
the branch of the tree in the picture-book, for the subject of her
second drawing. Before beginning her work, she studied all the touches
by which the drawing was made in the book, with great attention and
care, in order that she might imitate them as precisely as possible.
She succeeded very well indeed in this second attempt. The swing made
even a prettier picture than the house. When it was finished she cut
the paper out, of the same size with the other, drew a border around
it, and marked it No. 2. She went on in this manner every day as long
as she remained at Mary Erskine's, drawing a new picture every day.
At last, when she went home, Mary Erskine put all her drawings up
together, and Mary Bell carried them home to show them to her mother.
This was the beginning of Mary Bell's drawing.

As for Mary Erskine, her second lesson was the word _Erskine_,
which she found a great deal harder to write than Mary. There was one
thing, however, that pleased her in it, which was that there was one
letter which she knew already, having learned it in Mary: that was the
_r_. All the rest of the letters, however, were new, and she had
to practice writing the word two evenings before she could write it
well, without looking at the copy. She then thought that probably by
that time she had forgotten _Mary_; but on trying to write that
word, she was very much pleased to find that she could write it
much more easily than she could before. This encouraged her, and she
accordingly took Forester for her third lesson without any fear of
forgetting the Mary and the Erskine.

The Forester lesson proved to be a very easy one. There were only
three new letters in it, and those three were very easy to write. In
fine, at the end of the four days, when Mary Bell was to go home, Mary
Erskine could read, write, and spell her name very respectably well.

Mrs. Bell came herself for Mary when the time of her visit expired.
She