not Peter build it all himself? The kitchen dresser is a packing-case, and packing-cases in disguise make up most of the bedroom furniture; there is not a single cupboard in the house, and Peter has yet to put up the scullery and shed—but what of that? He has got as far as planning them, anyway; and the wants that are hopes only make looking forward the more pleasurable; they furnish the future. Philosophers tell us that the best way to be rich is, to have few wants; but whenever I visit the Rosses I have my doubts of this, and suspect instead that the really richest man is he who has the most schemes up his sleeve.
Ah, at last! a sparkle of something bright moving behind the westerly pines, and here comes Mrs. Ross round the corner, a little tin pail in each hand. Look at her well, for you shall see a happy woman. Not very handsome is Catherine, with her spare figure, a little stooped, her weather-beaten, life-worn face, and hair long since gone grey. Neither is she elegant, or even picturesque, with those tucked-up skirts, that must already have been old when she brought them out from Home, that tweed cap of Peter’s on her head, and those clumping, thick boys’ boots. But Catherine Ross has things to think about far more interesting than her own outward show; and the moment we really look into that pleasant face of hers, with its honest, kindly glance, and its settled look of happiness, so have we.
“I was feeding some chicken we’ve got up yonder, beyond the rye-patch,” she explains, the first greetings done. “You really must come up by and by and see ’em, for they’re real beauties,
