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 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!" "What a useless, stupid girl you would soon become," observed Lady Harriet. "Do you think, Laura, that lessons were invented for no other purpose but to torment little children?" "No, grandmama; not exactly! They are of use also to keep us quiet." "Come here, little madam, and listen to me. I shall soon be very old, Laura, and not able to read my Bible, even with spectacles; for, as the Scriptures told us, in that affecting description of old age, which I read to you yesterday, 'the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened:' what then do you think I can do, because the Bible now is my best comfort, which I shall need more and more every day, to tell me all about the eternal world where I am going, and to shew me the way." "Grandmama! you promised long ago to let me attend on you when you grow old and blind! I shall be very careful, and very--very--very kind. I almost wish you were old and blind now, to let you feel how much I love you, and how anxious I am to be as good to you as you have always been to me. We shall read the Bible together every morning, and as often afterwards as you please." "Thank you, my dear child! but you must take the trouble of learning to read well, or we shall be sadly puzzled with the difficult words. A friend of mine once had nobody that could read to her when she was ill, but the maid, who bargained that she might leave out every word above one syllable long, because they were too hard for her; and you could hardly help laughing at the nonsense it sometimes made; but I hope you will manage better." "O certainly, grandmama! I can spell chrononhotonthologos, and all the other five-cornered words in my 'Reading Made Easy,' already."