Transcriber's note: Unusual and inconsistent spelling is as printed.
[Illustration: Nelly.—Frontispiece.
Crummie stood quite still munching the bits of bread Nelly gave her.]
NELLY;
OR,
The Best Inheritance.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "IRISH AMY," ETC. ETC.
[LUCY ELLEN GUERNSEY]
PHILADELPHIA:
AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION,
NO. 1122 CHESTNUT STREET.
NEW YORK: 599 BROADWAY.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by the
AMERICAN SUNDAY-SCHOOL UNION,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for
the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
CHAPTER XII.
NOTE.
This little story is written to illustrate the value of honesty and
faithfulness in small and great matters. Nelly's earnings may possibly
be considered rather large for a girl of her age; but a lady of much
experience, to whom I referred the matter, assures me that they are not
exaggerated, and that a perfectly trustworthy clerk is worth almost any
price to his or her employers. A woman mostly confined to the bed and
sofa earned, in three years, nearly seven hundred dollars by doing the
finer and more elaborate kinds of tatting.
NELLY;
OR,
THE BEST INHERITANCE.
CHAPTER I.
"WHAT'S the use?" said Nelly, with a sort of hopeless bitterness in her
tone. "There's no use in my ever trying to be anybody!"
Nelly Ryan was leaning against the rickety gate of her grandmother's
more rickety cottage, watching a procession of girls about her own
age, who were passing on the other side of the street on their way
to church. There were about thirty of them, all very nicely dressed,
walking two-and-two, and talking quietly to each other. They were the
pupils of an old-established boarding-school in the place where Nelly
lived; and, as Nelly looked at their dainty, fresh spring dresses and
bonnets, their neat boots and gloves, and white collars, and then at
her own ragged, faded delaine, her toes peeping out of a pair of old
shoes much too large for her, and the tangled, rusty elf-locks of her
hair, she felt the contrast very deeply and bitterly. She was a pretty
little girl, about thirteen years old, with curly black hair, gray
eyes, and a slender but strong and lithe figure. Not one of all the
girls she envied could match her in good looks; but her slender hands
were grimed and encrusted with dirt, and her face not much better
off; her hair looked as if it had hardly known a comb, and her frock
was covered with grease and dirt and torn into various stirrups and
three-cornered rents. She might have been called a hopeless-looking
child enough; and yet there was something in her face that promised
better things. She stood looking after the school-girls till they
turned a corner, and then, leaning her head against the gate, she cried
bitterly but quietly, all the while saying to herself—
"It's too bad! It's too bad! I can't never be anybody or have any
thing! It's too bad!"
"What is the matter, little one?" asked a pleasant voice. Nelly
glanced up hastily, wiping away her tears with her dirty hands, so
that she looked more forlorn than ever. A young lady stood by the
gate, regarding her with an expression of interest and sympathy which
Nelly felt at once to be genuine. She was nicely and tastefully though
not gayly dressed, and in her hand she held a couple of books, and a
little nosegay of early spring flowers,—sweet blue and white violets,
primroses, periwinkles, and such like,—with a few geranium and ivy
leaves.
As Nelly looked up, she repeated her question, adding, "Are you sick?"
"No," stammered Nelly, shyly, hanging down her head.
"What is the matter?" asked the young lady. "I am sure you must be in
some trouble, to cry so bitterly."
But Nelly would not tell the cause of her grief, and very likely could
not have done so if she had tried.
"Do you go to Sunday-school?" asked the lady.
"No," answered Nelly.
"That is a pity! Why don't you go? I think you would like it very much."
"I haven't got any thing to wear," said Nelly; and, as if gaining
confidence, she added, "I went once to the mission school up here, but
the girls were all dressed so fine that I felt ashamed. They stared at
me; and one of them called me a little rag-bag. I don't never mean to
go there no more. What's the use?"
"She was a very impolite little girl," said Miss Powell (for that was
the young lady's name). "I would not have minded her."
"You would if you was me," said Nelly.
Miss Powell smiled. "Well, perhaps so. We cannot always judge for other
people. What is your name?"
"Nelly Ryan."
"And do you live here?" asked the young lady, glancing at the house.
Nelly looked at it too, and, somehow, as she followed the direction of
Miss Powell's eye, she seemed to see, as she had never done before,
what a miserable place it was, how black and dirty the floor looked
through the open door, and what quantities of old bones, old shoes and
other rubbish were littered about the door-yard. The bitter feeling
came up in her heart again, as she answered,—
"Yes; I live here with my grandmother. It is a mean old place, but I
can't help it. It's the best we've got, anyhow."
"Well, Nelly, I cannot stop any longer now, but I shall perhaps see you
again some day, and we will have a talk about these things." She opened
the book which she carried, as she spoke, and took out a beautiful
little picture printed in colours and representing a string of girls,
something like those Nelly had just seen, passing two-by-two into a
church-door. There was a hymn under the picture, and a coloured border
all round it.
"Would you like this little card?" she asked.
Nelly's eyes brightened. She thought she had hardly ever seen any thing
so pretty.
"You may keep it,—and these flowers too, if you like," said Miss
Powell. "They will stay fresh and sweet a long time if you give them
clean water every day."
Nelly took the flowers and the card without speaking. Miss Powell
bade her good-morning and walked on; but presently she heard some one
running behind her, and turned around. There was Nelly, almost out of
breath.
"I—I only wanted to say, Thank you, ma'am," stammered Nelly; and then,
as though almost ashamed of what she had done, she turned and ran back
again.
"That is a child of some character," thought Miss Powell, as she
quickened her steps. "I must try to see her again."
"What a nice young lady!" said Nelly to herself, as she presently
slackened her pace and went along alternately admiring and smelling
her flowers and looking at the picture she still carried in her other
hand. Presently she glanced at the back of the card, which was coloured
a pretty pink, and noticed, to her great mortification, that her dirty
fingers had already left their marks upon the paper. The lump came into
her throat again at the sight.
"There it is!" said she. "What is the use of my ever trying to have any
thing?" And then she stopped suddenly; for the question occurred to her
mind, what was there to hinder her from washing her hands?
Full of a new resolution, Nelly walked straight into the house. It
consisted only of one room, with a sort of shed or lean-to attached,
and held a bed, an old but tolerably whole cooking-stove, two or three
more or less broken chairs, and a rickety table, on which stood the
remains, such as they were, of the morning's meal. Her grandmother sat
on a low stool by the stove, with her elbows on her knees, smoking a
short black pipe. Nelly had been in better rooms a few times in her
life, and she felt, as she came in, how forlorn the place looked. Again
she was tempted to despair; but she had thought of something to do, and
she had a deal of perseverance and energy, though nothing had ever been
done to cultivate those qualities. She first took a broken tumbler from
the shelf, filled it with clean water, in which she put her flowers,
and, placing them on the window-sill, stood looking at them with great
satisfaction.
"See, granny; a'n't they lovely?"
"'Deed and they are," replied the old woman. "Where did you get them,
honey?"
"A lady gave 'em to me. She gave me this picture, too. Can't you read
it, granny? What does it say under there?"
"Sure, child, I've forgot all my learning, and not much there was to
forget."
"Why can't I have some learning, granny? Why can't I go to school?"
"And what would become of the cow if ye went to school all day, and
me hardly able to move? Don't ye worry about that, now. Your father
learned to read and write too, and much good it did him."
Nelly sighed,—a sort of fierce, impatient sigh,—and began busily
seeking in every corner till she found a pin with which to fasten her
card to the wall. Then she searched again till she found an old basin,
which she filled with rain-water and carried out into the shed, where
presently was heard a great splashing and rubbing. By-and-by Nelly
called out, "Granny, where's the soap?"
"And what do you want with the soap, child?" asked the old woman.
"To wash myself."
"What ails the child this morning?" said Mrs. Ryan, in a tone of as
much surprise as if such a use of soap had been utterly unknown to her
experience. "You'll find it on the end of the shelf; if there is any;
but don't you be wasting it. I'll may-be washing to-morrow."
By much searching, Nelly found a small and greasy remnant of soap,
which she used to such good purpose that she presently appeared with
face and hands perfectly white and clean.
Then came another inquiry—"Where's the comb, granny?"
Followed by the counter-question—"What do you want with it?"
"I want to comb my hair."
"You are wonderful nate this morning, seems to me," said Mrs. Ryan.
"What ails you?"
"I like to be decent sometimes," said Nelly. "I felt ashamed this
morning when the lady was speaking to me."
"Sure the lady knows we are poor folks," said Mrs. Ryan, good-naturedly
laying down her pipe to assist Nelly in her search for the comb. It was
finally discovered behind an old band-box on the shelf; but Nelly found
the use of it no easy matter. Her curly hair was matted into a hundred
knots; and the more she wetted it, the more it twisted and curled into
rings, as if it had been alive.
"Granny, I wish you'd cut my hair short, like Kitty Brown's," said
Nelly, finally. "I can't never get the tangles out."
Mrs. Ryan wondered more and more what had suddenly taken possession
of her grand-daughter; but she was fond of the child, and willing
to gratify her where it was not too much trouble; so she hunted up
her scissors and clipped Nelly's black rings close to her head, and
proceeded farther to part them evenly upon the top, so that they curled
round her face in a way that many a modern young lady might have envied.
"Look at yourself in the glass, and see how nice you look," said Mrs.
Ryan, as she finished her operation. "There's not a lady in the land
any prettier, if you were only dressed up."
"And why can't I be dressed up?" asked Nelly. "Why can't I have things
like the Jenkins girls and Kitty Brown?"
"Because we're poor folks, child. Don't I tell you so every day? Just
you wait till the money comes from Ireland I told you of, and then see
the silks and satins I'll buy you, and the gold watches and diamond
rings you'll have!"
"I don't want diamond rings and gold watches; and a pretty figure I'd
make dressed up in silks and satins, and me not knowing how to read,"
said Nelly, pettishly. "I want to be decent now; and I don't believe
the money ever will come from Ireland. I don't believe there is any
money there."
"Then it is a wicked, ungrateful child you are, not to believe your own
granny," said Mrs. Ryan, much displeased by this profession of unbelief
on Nelly's part. "Haven't I told you over and over how my father was
second cousin to the Earl of Glengall, that was descended from the old
Butler that was king in Ireland long ago? And didn't I tell you about
his visiting my lord, and the racehorses he kept, and the servants
he had? And don't it stand to reason, when the old lord died without
children—"
"I don't want to hear about it," interrupted Nelly. "I'm tired of it.
If my great-grandfather was cousin to all the lords in Ireland, it
won't ever do us any good." So saying, Nelly flung out of the house and
resumed her old position of leaning over the gate.
There had been a time when Nelly took great delight in these golden
visions of her grandmother's, and could spend hours in listening to
Mrs. Ryan's tales of the grandeur of her father's family, and in
dreaming over them in her own mind. To the old woman herself they
were meat and drink, clothing and fire-wood. She had arranged all in
her own mind a hundred times,—how a letter was to come from foreign
parts, telling her the news that she had succeeded to the estates of
her father's cousin,—how a grand gentleman, with a splendid carriage
and footmen in livery, such as she had often seen in her childhood,
should drive up to the door and take in herself and Nelly, while all
the neighbours stood staring,—how he would buy them all manner of fine
things, and she should be a countess no less, and Nelly would be called
Lady Eleanor. All this she had gone over in her own mind, and talked
over with Nelly a thousand times, almost always concluding with,—
"And then the folks where ye go now to carry the milk and bring home
the swill will be glad enough to get the nod of your head as you ride
through the streets in your grand carriage before you go home to old
Ireland, my bird."
Kelly used to love these stories dearly, and to believe them every
word; but she had lately been growing tired of them. As she grew older,
the trials of her position pressed upon her. She saw the difference
between herself and other girls of her age whose fathers and mothers
worked for them and sent them to school. She began to have a perception
that it would be wiser for her grandmother and herself to take some
pains with the small piece of ground they could call their own, than
to spend all their time in talking about the grand flower-gardens and
parks of the Earl of Glengall. Mrs. Vandake had no more land than they
had, and she had a deal more work to do; yet Mrs. Vandake, with what
help her husband could give her before and after hours, raised cabbages
and lettuce and peas and beans and tomatoes and grapes, and many a
flower beside. It was easy to talk of the silks and satins she would
wear when she was Lady Eleanor; but meantime the Vandake children went
to church and school nicely dressed, with whole shoes and stockings,
and warm mittens and hoods for cold days, while Nelly's only two frocks
were in rags, and her old shoes kept out neither snow nor water.
Nelly was naturally a bright, thoughtful child, with very strong
feelings and a tendency to brooding and sadness. As she pondered over
these things, and felt more and more the disadvantages of her position
and manner of life, she began to doubt and to dislike her grandmother's
stories, and ended by disbelieving them altogether.
"I don't believe there was ever any such earl," said she, as she went
out to the gate. "I don't believe my grandfather was first cousin to
anybody."
Nelly certainly stated the case strongly. She was hardly fair to her
grandmother's romance, however, which, strange as it may seem, had a
small foundation in fact. Mrs. Ryan's father was the youngest son of
a younger son of one of the Earls of Glengall, who, in a drunken fit,
had married the daughter of one of his lordship's tenants. There was
no particular disparity of fortune between the parties, for neither of
them had a penny beforehand; but the Butlers stood greatly upon their
gentility as relations of my lord's, and were so terribly shocked at
the match that they refused to have any thing to do with either Alick
or his wife. To be sure, after Alick broke his neck off the bridge
coming home from a fair one dark night, they sent some assistance to
his widow and her baby girl; but they were poor enough themselves, and
had hard work to keep soul and body together, and at last went away to
Canada altogether.
Gracey Butler grew up like the other barefooted girls in the cottages
round about; but her mother never let her forget that she was third
cousin to an earl, and if every one had his rights, as she was fond of
saying, the park where Gracey went nutting, and the great house which
she saw from the outside, would all be hers some day. But every one did
not have his rights; or, as is more probable, there were no rights to
have. Gracey grew up and married Tim Ryan, and came away to America,
and reared up a son who fell into bad courses and got into State's
prison, where he died. Nelly's mother took to drink and died also,
leaving this one little girl to her grandmother's care. Mrs. Ryan owned
her house, such as it was, and she also owned a pig and one cow, which
pastured upon the commons, watched by Nelly, in the summer, and lived
in winter on the slops which Nelly gathered from house to house.
The one thing about which Mrs. Ryan was neat was her milk; and as she
was also perfectly honest, gave good measure and never sold water,
she had as many customers as she could supply. Nelly carried round
the milk and fed the cow and gathered the slops, and the old woman
cooked and washed after her fashion, and milked, and measured the milk,
and smoked her pipe, and now and then took a drink (but not often),
and entertained herself and Nelly in the manner we have described;
and while Nelly was a little child she was perhaps as happy as most
children. Her grandmother never ill-treated her; she had enough to
eat, such as it was, and she loved to hear about all the grandeur she
was heir to. But she was growing a great girl. She began to think,
to reason, and to compare; and she grew more and more unhappy and
dissatisfied every day.