“Now,” said Mary Erskine to Bella, “you must study a and b for half an hour.  I shall tell you when I think the half hour is out.  If you get tired of sitting at your desk, you may take your board and your chalk out to the door and sit upon the step.  You must spend all the time in making the letters on the board, and you may say a and b while you are making the letters, but besides that you must not speak a word.  For every time that you speak, except to say a and b, after I tell you to begin, you will have to pick up a basket of chips.”

Picking up baskets of chips was the common punishment that Bella was subjected to for her childish misdemeanors.  There was a bin in the stoop, where she used to put them, and a small basket hanging up by the side of it.  The chip-yard was behind the house, and there was always an abundant supply of chips in it, from Albert’s cutting.  The basket, it is true, was quite small, and to fill it once with chips, was but a slight punishment; but slight punishments are always sufficient for sustaining any just and equitable government, provided they are certain to follow transgression, and are strictly and faithfully enforced.  Bella was a very obedient and submissive child, though she had scarcely ever been subjected to any heavier punishment than picking up chips.

“Shall I begin now?” said Bella.

“No,” replied her mother, “wait, if you like, till Mary Bell has taken her lesson.”

“I don’t see how I am going to draw,” said Mary Bell, “without any pencil.”

“You will have to draw with the pen,” said Mary Erskine.  “I am very sorry that I have not got any pencil for you.”

So saying, Mary Erskine took up the picture-book, and began turning over the leaves, to find, as she said, the picture of a house.  She should think, she said, that the picture of a house would be a good thing to begin with.

She found a view of a house in the third picture in the book.  There was a great deal in the picture besides the house, but Mary Erskine said that the house alone should be the lesson.  There was a pond near it, with a shore, and ducks and geese swimming in the water.  Then there was a fence and a gate, and a boy coming through the gate, and some trees.  There was one large tree with a swing hanging from one of the branches.

“Now, Mary,” said Mary Erskine, speaking to Mary Bell, “you may take the house alone.  First you must look at it carefully, and examine all the little lines and marks, and see exactly how they are made.  There is the chimney, for example.  See first what the shape of the outline of it is, and look at all those little lines, and those, and those,” continued Mary Erskine, pointing to the different parts of the chimney.  “You must examine in the same way all the other lines, in all the other parts of the picture, and see exactly how fine they are, and how near together they are, so that you can imitate them exactly.  Then you must make some little dots upon your paper to mark the length and breadth of the house, so as to get it of the right shape; and then draw the lines and finish it all exactly as it is in the book.”