steadily persevered.  She wrote the words, first in separate letters, and then afterwards in a joined hand, again and again, going down the paper.  She found that she could write a little more easily, if not better, as she proceeded,—­but still the work was very hard.  At ten o’clock her paper was covered with what she thought were miserable scrawls, and her wrist and her fingers ached excessively.  She put her work away, and prepared to go to bed.

“Perhaps I shall have to give it up after all,” said she.  “But I will not give up till I am beaten.  I will write an hour every day for six months, and then if I can not write my name so that people can read it, I will stop.”

The next day about an hour after breakfast Mary Erskine had another school for the children.  Bella took the two next letters c and d for her lesson, while Mary Bell took the swing hanging from the branch of the tree in the picture-book, for the subject of her second drawing.  Before beginning her work, she studied all the touches by which the drawing was made in the book, with great attention and care, in order that she might imitate them as precisely as possible.  She succeeded very well indeed in this second attempt.  The swing made even a prettier picture than the house.  When it was finished she cut the paper out, of the same size with the other, drew a border around it, and marked it No. 2.  She went on in this manner every day as long as she remained at Mary Erskine’s, drawing a new picture every day.  At last, when she went home, Mary Erskine put all her drawings up together, and Mary Bell carried them home to show them to her mother.  This was the beginning of Mary Bell’s drawing.

As for Mary Erskine, her second lesson was the word Erskine, which she found a great deal harder to write than Mary.  There was one thing, however, that pleased her in it, which was that there was one letter which she knew already, having learned it in Mary:  that was the r.  All the rest of the letters, however, were new, and she had to practice writing the word two evenings before she could write it well, without looking at the copy.  She then thought that probably by that time she had forgotten Mary; but on trying to write that word, she was very much pleased to find that she could write it much more easily than she could before.  This encouraged her, and she accordingly took Forester for her third lesson without any fear of forgetting the Mary and the Erskine.

The Forester lesson proved to be a very easy one.  There were only three new letters in it, and those three were very easy to write.  In fine, at the end of the four days, when Mary Bell was to go home, Mary Erskine could read, write, and spell her name very respectably well.

Mrs. Bell came herself for Mary when the time of her visit expired.  She was very much pleased to learn how good a girl and how useful her daughter had been.  She was particularly pleased with her drawings.  She said that she had been very desirous to have Mary learn to draw, but that she did not know it was possible to make so good a beginning without a teacher.