Beyond the work table, on one of the sides of the room, was a cupboard, and next to the cupboard a large window.  This was the only window in the house, and it had a sash which would rise and fall.  Mary Erskine had made white curtains for this window, which could be parted in the middle, and hung up upon nails driven into the logs which formed the wall of the house, one on each side.  Of what use these curtains could be except to make the room look more snug and pleasant within, it would be difficult to say; for there was only one vast expanse of forests and mountains on that side of the house, so that there was nobody to look in.

On the back side of the room, in one corner, was the bed.  It was supported upon a bedstead which Albert had made.  The bedstead had high posts, and was covered, like the window, with curtains.  In the other corner was the place for the loom, with the spinning-wheel between the loom and the bed.  When Mary Erskine was using the spinning-wheel, she brought it out into the center of the room.  The loom was not yet finished.  Albert was building it, working upon it from time to time as he had opportunity.  The frame of it was up, and some of the machinery was made.

Mary Erskine kept most of her clothes in a trunk; but Albert was making her a bureau.

Instead of finding it lonesome at her new home, as Mrs. Bell had predicted, Mary Erskine had plenty of company.  The girls from the village, whom she used to know, were very fond of coming out to see her.  Many of them were much younger than she was, and they loved to ramble about in the woods around Mary Erskine’s house, and to play along the bank of the brook.  Mary used to show them too, every time they came, the new articles which Albert had made for her, and to explain to them the gradual progress of the improvements.  Mary Bell herself was very fond of going to see Mary Erskine,—­though she was of course at that time too young to go alone.  Sometimes however Mrs. Bell would send her out in the morning and let her remain all day, playing, very happily, around the door and down by the spring.  She used to play all day among the logs and stumps, and upon the sandy beach by the side of the brook, and yet when she went home at night she always looked as nice, and her clothes were as neat and as clean as when she went in the morning.  Mrs. Bell wondered at this, and on observing that it continued to be so, repeatedly, after several visits, she asked Mary Bell how it happened that Mary Erskine kept her so nice.

“Oh,” said Mary Bell, “I always put on my working frock when I go out to Mary Erskine’s.”

The working frock was a plain, loose woolen dress, which Mary Erskine made for Mary Bell, and which Mary Bell, always put on in the morning, whenever she came to the farm.  Her own dress was taken off and laid carefully away upon the bed, under the curtains.  Her shoes and stockings were taken off too, so that she might play in the brook if she pleased, though Mary Erskine told her it was not best to remain in the water long enough to have her feet get very cold.