The next few days were those of considerable physical toil to our friends. The care of the younger children had to be resigned to a young girl who had been taken to assist her maid of all work; and Harry found himself straying occasionally to his favorite puddle, which, much to his regret, became gradually smaller, until at last it entirely disappeared.

Those few days had, however, wrought a wonderful change in the appearance of things within the house; and it is astonishing what marvels a few dollars will effect in producing these results when directed by taste. A little paint, some neat but low priced wall-paper, a little white dimity, chintz, and a few yards of white muslin, with some matting on the floor, had effected true wonders. The family portraits and engravings relieved the nakedness of the walls; curtains of thin white muslin, tied up with some tasteful ribbon, gave an air of refinement to the otherwise decidedly vulgar windows, whilst the chintz and dimity covered with graceful folds many an otherwise plain and homely deal plank.

“I declare,” mused Maria to herself, “we are becoming quite presentable, almost ready to receive company. Yet something seems wanting—I have it; there’s enough of that blue and fawn-colored chintz still left; I will get Henry to saw me off a couple of boxes of the right size—Sam shall bring me some wool to stuff them with, and I will have a pair of ottomans.”

No sooner thought than done. The boxes were hunted up, and found to suit exactly, except that they were a few inches too high.

“Henry, dear,” she said to her husband, when they had finished dinner, “wont you just take a saw and come and saw me off a piece from each of these boxes that are lying out there?”

“Yes—but what on earth do you want to do with them, Maria?”

“Never you mind, sir; you shall know all in good time. There now, dear—there—just saw six inches off from the length of each of them. Had not you better take a rule to measure them carefully? for I want them just of a heighth, and sawed off very smoothly.”

He did as he was required—placed the boxes in the designated place, and went out to superintend his men, and continue his lessons in the practical details of his new employment. As soon as he was gone, she brought her chintz, and was soon deep in all the mysteries of measuring and fitting. The side pieces were soon cut off to the desired sizes—the ready needle prepared them for fastening on; but she could do nothing with the seat until she had procured the wool. That was done by the farm-hand that evening; and as soon as her husband had gone out after breakfast, she was busily engaged in fitting the top and stuffing it. The upholstery work was completed to her entire satisfaction, and when her husband came in to tea, she said quietly to him,

“I want you to come into the parlor and listen to my music for a little time.”

This was always irresistible—he followed her in and prepared for his treat, when she said to him, “I have a great notion not to play a note for you, as you have not taken the slightest notice of my new ottomans.”

He looked his surprise, but following the direction of her eye, the new articles of furniture met his view.

“I suppose I am now enlightened as to what you wanted with those boxes, and to be sawed so carefully yesterday. But when, in Heaven’s name, Maria, do you find time to do all you do! Here are you, a delicately nurtured woman, attending to most of the details of the dairy—arranging chambers and sitting-rooms—nursing, making beds, sweeping, dusting, sewing, and what not; and now, to crown all, you must needs take to upholstering, as if you had not enough already to do.”

“I am sure,” she said, looking up at her curtaining “that latter is no new business. Learn, Henry, in regard to the time, the truth of the old adage, ‘when there’s a will, there’s a way.’ I thought the room did not look quite furnished, and so I determined on them. They certainly are a great improvement to the room—and aren’t they sweet, dear?”

“They certainly are very creditable to your taste and handiwork. But,” stooping over, and pressing a kiss on her rich rosy lips, “you must take more care of yourself, dearest, or you will overdo the matter.”

“Don’t I look like a tender, delicate creature, that requires careful nursing? Oh, fie on you! I am afraid you have lost all your gallantry. I am very certain Maria Davidson’s cheek was never half so blooming when you used to pay it so many compliments. I am certainly at least five pounds heavier than I was when I came up here. The sun, too, is giving my complexion that darker hue you so much admire.”

“I admire brown complexions! When did you ever hear me say so?”

“I don’t know that I ever did. But then, you know, dear, Laura Bridgeman was a decided brunette.”

“Pshaw!” said Dawson, laughing; “not jealous, I trust, Maria, of the remembrance of my old flirtation with Laura.”

“Not very, sir,” she added, looking down demurely, “for, you know, when it happened I was a little girl that had not yet come out.”

“What a fortunate escape Laura, and her mamma would think she had made, if they could only see me now busily engaged in my shirt-sleeves, planting, digging, weeding, raking, learning to mow, in fine, learning to earn my own bread and that of those dearer to me than life.”

“I don’t feel at all sentimental in connection with Laura Bridgeman; and so,” she added, turning to the piano and striking up a gallope, “here’s something that lady would prefer at any time to sentiment.”

The piece finished, she at once changed the measure, and in a few moments her rich, full voice was heard in a song which was a peculiar favorite of her husband’s. The sound of the music attracted the children, who now came in, the youngest in his young nurse’s arms, to kiss papa good-night, whilst Maria prepared her baby for bed.

Whilst our heroine was thus active within doors, it must not be supposed that her husband was supine without. He was industriously learning the practical parts of his new vocation. He was engaged, the dandy of the pavÉ, the saloons and the clubs, learning, in his shirt-sleeves, to plough, to harrow, to mow, to dig, and, in fine, to do all that a hard-working farmer is compelled to do. He was aware that the head as well as the hand is necessary to direct aright the art of tillage, as any other art, and that a man may learn every thing concerning the rotation of crops, and all the rest of the art, and yet be deficient in the skill of an ordinary hand in the manual operations; but he thought it best to learn all, in order that in future he might direct all; and so he worked away under the tuition of one of his hired men, and was rapidly becoming a proficient. The hands had lost the softness and whiteness of the city dandy, and had put on that covering of brown which he condemned on the cheek of his wife, only that the shade was darker, and the hardening process had been so gone through with that blisters no longer troubled him.

There was much to do, too, to the exterior of the place, in order to make it harmonize with the now refined interior; so the garden was enlarged, and fruit of various kinds set out at the proper time, and in another year or so they had reason to calculate upon a great improvement in every thing. Time never flew more rapidly with the subjects of our story, not even during the ever-memorable first summer after their wedding. It is true they had but little society, but the active discharge of their duties required the greater portion of their time, and the few occasional half hours of idleness in the day-time, were moments which required no foreign assistance to render them pleasant. After the children were dispatched for the night, and the supper things washed up, and the breakfast-table all set out to be ready for the morning, they would indulge themselves in some music, and then Dawson would read aloud, whilst Maria’s nimble fingers repaired some rent which the clothes of the children might have suffered, or prepared some necessary habiliment.

The neighborhood was thickly settled with a class of comfortable well-to-do farmers, almost exclusively the owners of the farms they occupied, whilst the village of Euston was only a little more than a mile distant. The good people had not, however, called much upon them. Some were restrained by one cause or another, although since rumors of their former position in life having got afloat, curiosity was largely on the tiptoe to see how they could bear their change and get along. The men formed a good opinion of him, when they saw him take off his coat and go to work, as they said, “like a man who wasn’t ashamed of his business;” and they prophesied he would get along. What the females thought may be judged by the following conversation.

“Well, I do declare this is very nice, comfortable,” said Miss Maggie Chatterton, as she undid her bonnet-strings and threw off her shawl amidst a female group of neighbors who were assembled in the best parlor of a certain Mrs. Holmes.

“Oh, Miss Maggie,” shouted two or three juveniles, starting from their various posts about the room, “do tell us that story you promised us last week.”

“Presently, dears, but I want to have a little chat with your mothers first. Seen the newcomers yet, any of you? I mean those city people the Dawsons.”

“Yes,” said Miss Susan Bitterly, a staid single lady of no particular age. “I saw them both as I passed by their place yesterday, and can’t say I saw any thing particularly desirable about either of them. They say she has a piano. I wonder what she expects to do with it here?”

“Well, for my part,” said Mrs. Hardmoney, the portly wife of a well-to-do farmer in the neighborhood, “I don’t see what farmers’ wives have to do with them there sort of things. When I was a girl, we were taught another guess matter than to sit thumping pianys all day.”

“I think you’re rather hard on the poor young thing,” said kind, motherly Mrs. Holmes, as she smoothed down carefully her best dress, which she wore in honor of the occasion; “it must certainly be a hard thing for her to come to such a change, after having had every thing so comfortable about her all her life.”

“Well, for my part,” said Miss Chatterton, “I quite pity her. And they say she’s such a dear, sweet little thing—yes, children, I’ll be with you presently—and all the fault of her husband. Not that I ever heard she complained of him. By the way, Mrs. Holmes, how’s your husband’s rheumatism to-day? I’ve heard of a new remedy for it. Ah! my dear Mrs. Brown,” she added, turning to another of the party, “I saw Henry Cole only yesterday, and he told me they were all well at his father’s. But, as I was saying, they say it was all his fault—”

“Maggie, are you never going to tell us that story?”

“Yes, dears, presently, when I’ve done here. Yes, she is quite a dear little thing, and Sally Irish, who lives with them, you know, says she’s so good and so gentle, and goes about every thing so nicely and so pleasantly, that she has quite won Sally’s heart already, and that, you know, is not very easy to do. It was only a day or two after they moved up, before they had got all fixed to rights, that she came up to Sally, who was washing out some things, and said to her, as she held out a bundle of nice muslins—‘Do, Sally, please wash these out for me this time, and I will stand by whilst you do it and learn how, and then, you know, another time I can do it myself, and perhaps, in time, I may learn to do it almost as well as you, Sally.’”

“Well, I am glad to hear she’s not so set up with her piany and such nicknakeries as to be above being willing to help herself some. When I heard what a heap of help they had down there, I thought sure as how they were going to bring all their city notions as well as their piany down here into the country.”

“Why, what harm can there be in a piano,” said the oldest of the Holmes girls, before whose eyes visions of a boarding-school, and a piano, and such like things had been for some time dancing; “I can’t see what harm there can be in having a piano. For my part I think it must be very nice, and I mean to go over and see that dear, pretty Mrs. Dawson, and perhaps she will play on hers for me.”

“No doubt she will, my dear,” said Miss Susan Bitterly; “accomplished ladies like her when they’re settled down among such barbarians as we, are glad to find some one as accomplished as yourself with whom to associate.”

A tart reply arose to Susan Holmes’ tongue, but an opportune look from her mother arrested it.

“I should think,” resumed Mrs. Hardmoney, “that their help would eat up all they make at any time. The Gilbert farm was never a very profitable one, and this man, Dawson, they say, knows nothing about farming. He’s hired Sara Bromley and Jim Clodpole to work on the place. Sam told my old man he was to have a kind of management of things, for Dawson hardly knew the tines of the fork from the handle. We all know that Sam is a managing fellow, and if he don’t contrive to get more out of the place than Dawson, I’m mistaken.”

“I think you do Sam injustice,” said Mrs. Holmes. “Mr. Holmes told me that Mr. Dawson came to see him about hiring Sam, and that he took him on his recommendation. Dawson is to pay him high wages, but Sam is a smart hand, and if Dawson will only keep his eyes open, he may learn a good deal from him.”

“One thing is very certain,” broke in our friend, Miss Chatterton—“I shall go see her as soon as she’s fixed, and I hope all the neighbors will. From what Sally Irish told me, I’m sure she is not a bit uppish, but will be glad to see us all. And you know, Mrs. Holmes, you can give her some of your nice recipes for country dishes, and teach her so many things, if you choose, about managing her dairy, and I am certain, from what Sally says, she will be much obliged to you for doing so.”

“Well, my dear,” said the lady, addressed, “I have been thinking about it for some time, only I thought perhaps she would not care to have any visitors until she got quite settled and began to feel quite at home. It was only to-day Mr. Holmes told me he thought it would be neighborly for me to go, and he was sure she would take it quite kindly. Mr. Dawson and he are quite sociable, and he often drops in to see how things are getting on as he goes by, and Mr. Dawson consults with him a good deal about things and is quite thankful to him for his advice.”

Mr. Holmes was one of the principal men in that part of the world. In addition to the very fine farm on which he lived, he was the owner of two or three others, and had some very comfortable snug sums invested in mortgages, and some stocks. Mr. Holmes’ opinion on any subject was then that of a man entitled to be heard, for it is astonishing what an additional force of wisdom those little things called dollars, when counted in tens of thousands, and especially in hundreds of thousands, lend to their possessor. Should it chance that they should mount into millions, Solomon himself, could he revisit the earth, would not be more regarded than are their fortunate possessors—their words are cherished as the very oracles of wisdom, and their breath is as it were the divine afflatus—men who possess them may pass their lives without contributing in the slightest degree to the comfort or happiness of their fellow men, the very incarnation of selfish avarice; but should they after their death, unable to carry it with them, build and endow an hospital, a college or a library, their names immediately ascend to heaven in grateful pÆans for their wondrous bounties, and they live in brick and marble for ages, whilst those whose lives have been past in one constant act of beneficence to their fellows, sink into their graves and are forgotten in a month.

Mr. Holmes’ opinions then, were of weight in the circle in which he moved, and his good lady re-echoing them, they bore down all feeling which the natural rancor of Miss Bitterly and the contracted views of Mrs. Hardmoney might have engendered in the breasts of the females around, against our sweet Maria. None of them had yet seen her; she had not been a month in their neighborhood, but they all had heard something good about her, and after wondering why the Dawsons had not yet been seen in any place of worship, and whether they didn’t mean to go, and if they did which—the conversation turned into other channels, and Maggie Chatterton at last yielded to the solicitations of the children to go over into their corner and tell them “that nice story.”

The village of Euston, though numbering less than a thousand inhabitants, was well supplied with places of public worship, for, as we have said, it was surrounded by a populous neighborhood. First, stood the old and venerable brick building, destitute of any ornament, unless the glazed ends of the blue-colored bricks scattered profusely through the walls could be called such, with its small, venerable porch. The building was, however, becoming too large for the worshipers, or rather the worshipers were becoming too few for the building, for the great dissension, some years previous, which rent the society in twain had reached here, and a large number had gone off to seek another building other than that in which, in contemplative silence, their sires and grandsires before them had worshiped. Then came the Baptists and Methodists, in their almost equally plain buildings but with large congregations, and the Presbyterians and Episcopalians, with more pretending buildings but much fewer numbers, brought up the rear.

It was not from want of a chance that the Protestant could not worship, and the number of emigrants in the neighborhood was so small that the chapel of the Roman Catholic had not yet appeared. Before removing to the country Dawson and his wife had been regular attendants on every Sunday morning, or at least on every not very wet or stormy Sunday morning, at a church of the Episcopal denomination. They went, especially the gentleman, more from a feeling that it was a tribute rendered to propriety than from any other motive. Not that he was an irreligious man; he was simply a careless one. Of religion in the abstract, he professed when he spoke of it, which was very seldom, great respect. He had never been led off either by reading or the influence of companionship to any thing beyond simple indifference. He saw that those who were called “religious people”—“church members”—most of them declined frequenting the opera, or the theatre, or ball-room. He could not understand this—he could not comprehend why what he considered the innocent pleasures of life were to be thus given up. It is true he often met these very persons in the concert-room, or at what he thought very large parties, provided there was no dancing—he could not understand those which he considered distinctions without a difference, except that the music of the concert-room would be improved by scenic representations in costume, or that the scandal of the tea-party might be advantageously broken in upon by the music of the dance. This was the reasoning of one who merely regarded the surface—beyond this he had not penetrated. Religion itself, as a vital, soul-giving principle, he had never studied. A large portion of the Bible was familiar to him—he admired the psalms of David for their exquisite pathos and simplicity—the sublimity of Isaiah, and the mournful imagery of Jeremiah had touched his fancy, but his heart had been unmoved, either by these or the gentle teachings and lofty morality of the New Testament. He read the Bible as he did the works of other great authors, to please his fancy, his imagination, but not as the Book in which choice of life and death, the mode of attaining the one and avoiding the other, is offered to mankind. Maria, like most women, possessed deeply religious sensibilities. The Bible was not to her a sealed book, and she was unconsciously most probably to herself, much influenced in her actions by its teachings. But her mode of life and that of her husband had not been such as to allow it to make any very deep impression on her. Had one charged her with being deficient in religious feeling she would have shrunk back from it with horror. But, in very truth, though the germs may have been planted in her heart, the requisite sun and rain had not yet reached them to mature them. With such views, they had not hastened their motions churchward, and, since their removal, were under some feeling of embarrassment at a first meeting with a congregation all strangers to them.

——