So she determined to _plant_ her potatoes instead of roasting them.
She accordingly dug a hole in the sand with her fingers, and put the potatoes in, and then after covering them, over with the sand, she went to the oven to get her fire-pan for her watering-pot, in order to water her garden.
The holes in the bottom of the dipper made it an excellent watering-pot, provided the garden to be watered was not too far from the brook: for the shower would always begin to fall the instant the dipper was lifted out of the water.
[Illustration: MARY BELL AT THE BROOK.] After watering her garden again and again, Mary Bell concluded on the whole not to wait for her potatoes to grow, but dug them up and began to wash them in the brook, to make them ready for the roasting.

Her little feet sank into the sand at the margin of the water while she held the potatoes in the stream, one in each hand, and watched the current as it swept swiftly by them.

After a while she took them out and put them in the sun upon a flat stone to dry, and when they were dry she carried them to her oven and buried them in the hot embers there.
Thus Mary Bell would amuse herself, hour after hour of the long day, when she went to visit Mary Erskine, with an endless variety of childish imaginings.

Her working-frock became in fact, in her mind, the emblem of complete and perfect liberty and happiness, unbounded and unalloyed.
The other children of the village, too, were accustomed to come out and see Mary Erskine, and sometimes older and more ceremonious company still.

There was one young lady named Anne Sophia, who, having been a near neighbor of Mrs.Bell's, was considerably acquainted with Mary Erskine, though as the two young ladies had very different tastes and habits of mind, they never became very intimate friends.