Page:Camperdown - Griffith - 1836.djvu/200

 house, and asked her to take a walk and look at the gentleman's improvements. On being urged by Mrs. M'Curdy, whom she very much respected, and seeing the eager looks of the children, she sat out with them. All was wonderment and pleasure when they got to the shanty, for the pots were boiling, and the meat was roasting, loaves of bread, and plates of butter, and gingerbread, and small cakes, were all paraded on a clean new table; in short, a house-warming was prepared for some one.

"Oh! if all this was for me and my poor children," thought Bonny Betty, "how happy I should be; but then there's the other poor bodies, I'm thinking, wishing the same thing, and sure, have not they as good a right as me?"

"Now Betty, did not I tell you, that you'd eat your dinner in a better house than your old ricketty forlorn one? You are in your own house now, Bonny Betty! for the good kind man, God bless him, has bid me tell you, that by giving him the same rent that you pay for that old one, you may live in this nice comfortable house."

There was a general cry of joy; and Bonny Betty fell on her knees, and bade them all kneel down with her, and pray that she might continue to deserve this great good. Every thing was of the plainest materials, wooden presses, wooden bedsteads; in short, though all was new, yet there was nothing better than poor people generally buy; but what went most to Betty's heart, were the neat comfortable beds for her children, and the nice kitchen furniture, and the shed for the cow.

After they had dined, and assisted in washing up the plates and pots, the neighbours after again wishing her joy departed, and left her "alone in her glory," and no creature could be happier nor more thankful. It cannot be doubted that she prayed