children greater advantages than he had enjoyed, and to improve
the fine place of which he was justly proud. Mrs. Grant was a
notable housewife, as ambitious and industrious as her husband,
but too busy to spend any time on the elegancies of life, though
always ready to help the poor and sick like a good neighbor and
Christian woman. The three sons--Tom, Dick, and Harry--were big
fellows of seventeen, nineteen, and twenty-one; the first two on the
farm, and the elder in a store just setting up for himself.
Kind-hearted but rough-mannered youths, who loved Merry very
much, but teased her sadly about her "fine lady airs," as they called
her dainty ways and love of beauty.

Merry was a thoughtful girl, full of innocent fancies, refined tastes,
and romantic dreams, in which no one sympathized at home,
though she was the pet of the family. It did seem, to an outsider, as
if the delicate little creature had got there by mistake, for she
looked very like a tea-rose in a field of clover and dandelions,
whose highest aim in life was to feed cows and help make root
beer.

When the girls talked over the new society, it pleased Merry very
much, and she decided not only to try and love work better, but to
convert her family to a liking for pretty things, as she called her
own more cultivated tastes.

"I will begin at once, and show them that I don't mean to shirk my
duty, though I do want to be nice," thought she, as she sat at supper
one night and looked about her, planning her first move.

Not a very cheering prospect for a lover of the beautiful, certainly,