Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/400

 from the street, left an area of the width of ten or twelve yards in front of the house; and on this convenient spot, the former incumbent had erected a pig-sty, and piled up a nasty dunghill. Every shower of rain washed part of the contents into the unpaved foot-path, through which the children paddled ancle-deep in mud up to the school-room door. But they were used to it, and no one in the village had ever objected to the inconvenience.

Morison having removed the incumbrances, sowed the area with grass-seeds, and round it made a border to be filled with flowers and shrubs. It was then railed in, leaving a road up to the school, and an entrance, by a neat wicker-gate, to the front door of the dwelling-house. Planting, watering, and rearing the shrubs and flowers, which ornamented the borders of the grass-plot, became the favourite amusement of the elder school-boys; and, being the reward of good behaviour, was considered as a mark of favour which