It was a beautiful little cottage, with a thatched roof and little spires at the gable-ends, and pieces of stained glass in some of the windows.  On one side of the house was a little stable, just the size for the pony, with a little room over it, just the size for Kit.  White curtains were fluttering, and birds in cages were singing at the windows; plants were arranged on either side of the path, and clustered about the door; and the garden was bright with flowers in full bloom, which shed a sweet odour all around.

Everything within the house and without seemed to be the perfection of neatness and order.  Kit looked about him, and admired, and looked again, before he could make up his mind to turn his head and ring the bell.

He rung the bell a great many times, and yet nobody came.  But at last, as he was sitting upon the box thinking about giants’ castles, and princesses tied up to pegs by the hair of their heads, and dragons bursting out from behind gates, and other incidents of a like nature, common in story-books to youths on their first visit to strange houses, the door was gently opened, and a little servant-girl, very tidy, modest, and pretty, appeared.

“I suppose you’re Christopher, sir?” said the servant-girl.

Kit got off the box, and said yes, he was, and was ushered in.

The old gentleman received him very kindly, and so did the old lady, whose previous good opinion of him was greatly enhanced by his wiping his boots on the mat.  He was then taken into the parlour to be inspected in his new clothes; and then was shown the garden and his little room, and when the old gentleman had said all he had to say in the way of promise and advice, and Kit had said all he had to say in the way of assurance and thankfulness, he was handed over again to the old lady, who, summoning the little servant-girl (whose name was Barbara), instructed her to take him downstairs and give him something to eat and drink after his walk.

From that time Kit’s was a useful, pleasant life, moving on in a peaceful routine of duties and innocent joys from day to day, and from week to week,—­until the great, longed-for epoch of his life arrived—­the day of receiving, for the first time, one-fourth part of his annual income of Six Pounds.  It was to be a half-holiday, devoted to a whirl of entertainments, and little Jacob was to know what oysters meant, and to see a play.

The day arrived, and wasn’t Mr. Garland kind when he said to him,—­“Christopher, here’s your money, and you have earned it well;”—­which praise in itself was worth as much as his wages.