"If you please," said Mary, rapidly shifting the hot cake from one
hand to the other,--"if you please, I had rather go up now, and eat
the cake when it is cool."

"Come, then," said Judith; and leading the way, she conducted Mary up
the staircase, and through a light, airy hall to the door of a small
room, which she opened, saying "Look, ain't it pretty?"

But Mary's heart was too full to speak, and for several minutes she
stood silent. With the exception of her mother's pleasant parlor in
Old England, she had never before seen any thing which seemed to her
so cosy and cheerful as did that little room, with its single bed,
snowy counterpane, muslin curtains, clean matting, convenient toilet
table, and what to her was fairer than all the rest, upon the
mantel-piece there stood two small vases, filled with sweet spring
flowers, whose fragrance filled the apartment with delicious perfume.
All this was so different from the bare walls, uncovered floors, and
rickety furniture of the poor-house, that Mary trembled lest it should
prove a dream, from which erelong she would awake.

"Oh, why is Mrs. Mason so kind to me?" was her mental exclamation; and
as some of our readers may ask the same question, we will explain to
them that Mrs. Mason was one of the few who "do to others as they
would others should do to them."

Years before our story opens, she, too, was a lonely orphan, weeping
in a dreary garret, as ofttimes Mary had wept in the poor-house, and
it was the memory of those dark hours, which so warmed her heart
towards the little girl she had taken under her charge. From Jenny we