When Isabel was gone, Fanny saw that she must accustom herself to her cottage as it was, and banish from her mind the idea of the long-anticipated improvements. It was, however, no easy task. The window once regarded as bare and comfortless still seemed so, in spite of Fanny’s reasoning that it was no worse than Sally’s, which always looked cheerful and pretty. To be sure, John, who did not think of getting curtains, had trained a honeysuckle over it, still that made but little show at present. The carpet, too, so long regarded as a coarse temporary thing, never regained the beauty it first had to the eye of Thomas, as he laid it down the evening before he took Fanny to the cottage; and Fanny could never forget, as she arranged her tea-things, that Miss Isabel had called them “common little things;” so of all the other pieces of furniture that the young lady had remarked upon. Sally’s house was, in reality, more homely than her cousin’s, yet as she had never entertained a wish that it should be better, and as Laura had been pleased with all its arrangements, she bustled about it with perfect satisfaction; and even to Fanny it seemed replete with the comfort her own had always wanted. At the end of three months Isabel enclosed an order for three pounds to Fanny, desiring her to get a Brussels carpet, and if there was a sufficient remainder, to replace the tea set. “I would rather,” said Fanny to her cousin, “put up with the old carpet and china, and get a roll of fine flannel, some coals, an extra blanket or two, and a cradle for the little one that’s coming, for it will be cold weather when I am put to bed; but I suppose as Miss Isabel has set her mind on the carpet and china, I must get them.” A week or two after John was invited, with his wife and mother, to drink tea from Fanny’s new china. It was very pretty, so was the carpet, and so was Fanny making tea, elated with showing her new wealth. “Is not Miss Isabel generous?” asked she, as she held the milk-pot to be admired. “I sometimes wish Miss Laura had as much money to spare,” replied Sally; “for she lets me lay it out as I please, and I could get a number of things for three guineas.” “Fie, Sally,” said her husband; “are not three shillings to spend as one pleases, better than three guineas laid out to please some one else?” “Nonsense, John,” said Fanny, pettishly; “how can a carpet for my kitchen be bought to please any one but me?” “John isn’t far wrong either,” answered her husband; “but the carpet is very handsome, and does please you and me too, now it is here.”