lock of children sliding
yesterday, and I thought I knew the scarlet hood. It is more sensible
than a hat. Did you like the fun?"

"Oh, so much!" answered Primrose, her soft eyes shining like a summer
sky. "And I can keep up a good long while. But, when I go down, I do
often tip over."

"Thou wilt learn all these things. I am glad to have thee with the
children, too. It is not good for little ones to live too much with
grown people and get their ways."

"I know some of the girls," said Primrose. "I like Hannah Lee very much.
She goes to Master Dove's school, but Bella said she was poor."

"Fie! fie! Children should put on no such airs! Bella hath altogether
too many of them, and her mother is not an overwise woman! Let me hear
no more about whether one is poor or rich."

Primrose was not at all hurt by the chiding tone. She was so glad that
she might keep her friend with a clean conscience that she looked up and
smiled.

"Thou art a wholesome little thing, and the training of the Friends has
some good points. Let me see--I think thou canst have a white beaver
this winter, and a cloak with swansdown. And I will give Bella one of
blue, so she shall not ape thee. I do not like one to copy the other
when one purse is long and the other short."

"Oh, a white beaver! That would be beautiful!" and the eager eyes were
alight more with pleasure than vanity.

"She is like her mother," Madam Wetherill thought. Primrose was really
happy not to give up Hannah Lee. They could find so many subjects of
interchange--what the children were doing at Master Dove's school, and
the plays they had. The snowballing, although as yet there had been only
one snow, had been almost a battle between two parties of boys.

"But Master Dove said no one should dip the balls in water and then let
them freeze, or he would get birched soundly. The soft ones are more
fun, methinks; they often go to pieces in a shower. My brothers and I
snowball after the night work is done. We can keep no servant, so we all
have to help."

That was being poor, Primrose supposed. Yet Hannah seemed a great deal
kinder and merrier than Bella, and never said sharp things, or was
haughty to a playmate.

What Primrose had to tell seemed like wonderland to the little girl
whose only story was "Pilgrim's Progress"--the great house, with rugs
and silken curtains, the Chinese mandarin and the pagoda, the real
pictures that had come from England, and a beautiful, full-le