“But I believe poets always call this a miserable world: and I think it the happiest place I have ever been in, uncle David! Such fun during the holidays! I should go wild altogether, if Mrs. Crabtree were not rather cross sometimes.”

“Or very cross always,” thought Major Graham. “But here we are, Laura, near our journey’s end. Allow me to introduce you to Holiday House! Why, you are staring at it like a dog looking at a piece of cold beef! My dear girl, if you open your eyes so wide, you will never be able to shut them again!”

Holiday House was not one of those prodigious places, too grand to be pleasant, with the garden a mile off in one direction, and the farm a mile off in another, and the drawing-room a mile off from the dining-room; but it was a [73] ]very cheerful modern mansion, with rooms enough to hold as many people as any one could desire to see at once, all very comfortably furnished. A lively, dashing river, streamed past the windows; a small park, sprinkled with sheep, and shaded by fine trees, surrounded the house; and beyond were beautiful gardens filled with a superabundance of the gayest and sweetest common flowers. Roses, carnations, wall flowers, holly-hocks, dahlias, lilies, and violets, were assembled there in such crowds, that Laura might have plucked nosegays all day, without making any visible difference; and she was also made free of the gooseberry bushes and cherry-trees, with leave to gather, if she pleased, more than she could eat.

Every morning, Laura entered the breakfast-room with cheeks like the roses she carried, bringing little bouquets for all the ladies, which she had started out of bed early, in order to gather; and her great delight was to see them worn and admired all the forenoon, while she was complimented on the taste with which they had been selected and arranged. She filled every ornamental jar, basin, and tea-cup in the drawing-room, with groups of roses, and would have been the terror of any gardener but the one at Holiday House, who liked to see his flowers so much admired, and was not keeping up any for a horticultural show.

Laura’s chief delight, however, was in the dairy, which seemed the most beautiful thing she had ever beheld, being built of rough transparent spar, which looked exactly like crystal, and reminded her of the ice palace built by the Empress of Russia. The windows were of painted glass; the walls and shelves were

of Dutch tiles, and in the centre rose a beautiful jet d’eau of clear bright water.

Laura thought it looked like something built for the fairies; but within she

saw a most substantial room, the floor and tables in which were so completely covered with cheeses, that they looked like some old Mosaic pavement. Here the [74] ]good-natured dairy-maid showed Laura how to make cheese, and afterwards manufactured a very small one about the size of a soup plate, entirely for the young lady herself, which she promised to take home after her visit was over; and a little churn was also filled full of

cream, which Laura one morning churned into butter, and breakfasted upon, after having first practised printing it into a variety of shapes. It was altered about twenty times from a swan into a cow, and from a cow into a rose, and from a rose back to a swan again, before she could be persuaded to leave off her amusement.

Laura continued to become more and more delighted with Holiday House; and she one day skipped about Lady Harriet’s room, saying, “Oh! I am too happy! I scarcely know what to do with so much happiness. How delightful it would be to stay here all my life, and never to go to bed, nor say any more lessons as long as I live!”