THE next week the repairs upon the house were all finished, and Mr.
Grayson came down to inspect them. It was with no small pride that
Nelly showed him all that had been done. She was beginning to consider
Mr. Grayson as a friend. The old gentleman looked about into all the
holes and corners, inspected the cow-house, and shook his head over
some litter by the back door.
"All very nice, Nelly, and a great improvement; and now the main thing
is to keep it nice. Unless you do that, you might live in the finest
house in town, and never have it either neat or comfortable. Do you
know what dirt means, Nelly?"
Nelly thought she did; but when pressed to define the word she found it
not so easy.
"Well, now, I will tell you how a learned gentleman defined dirt. He
called it 'something in the wrong place.'"
"I should think dirt was always in the wrong place," said Nelly. "I
don't see how there can be any right place for dirt."
"Well, but let us see," said the old gentleman. "Now, here
is the litter and stuff in the cow-house. Where it is, it is
dirt,—ill-smelling, disagreeable, and bad both for Crummie's health
and your own; but put on your garden and well dug in, it will become
manure,—enriching the ground and helping to produce all sorts of
pleasant and useful things. Look at those ends of rag and snaps of
paper blowing about. Lying round as they do now, they are dirt; but
put them in your rag-bag and they will help to make nice white paper.
Grease makes very ugly spots on the floor or your dress; but we could
have neither soap nor candles without it. Now do you understand?"
"Yes, sir."
"Now, if I were you, I would clear out the cow-house thoroughly and
spread the stuff on the land. You can either dig it in this fall or let
it lie till spring; but as the ground has never been cultivated, it
might be better to dig it at once, so that the frost and snow may help
to mellow the soil and make it fine and fit for planting. It will be
rather hard work for you, so I will let my man dig it for you the first
time; after that, you must keep it in order yourself."
"I will," said Nelly. "Mrs. Caswell says she will give me some
raspberry and currant bushes, and some flowers, next spring, and a vine
to plant at the end of the house and run all over it, like that one on
the church, which turns so red in the fall."
"My gardener shall give you a grape-vine, and that will bear fruit as
well as look pretty," said Mr. Grayson. "Now, Nelly, remember what I
say about keeping things neat. I shall take a look at you now and then,
to see how you get along."
Nelly seemed likely to get on nicely, except that her different
employments rather interfered with each other.
The next time she went down to the shop, she found no one but Mrs.
Kirkland and Miss Powell, trying to wait on a whole shopful of people.
"Oh, Nelly, you are just the person I was wanting to see! Alice has
taken this time, of all others, to sprain her ankle; and Miss Cameron
must needs go and be married!" said Mrs. Kirkland, as if marriage were
an unheard-of transgression, invented for her express annoyance. "Miss
Powell and myself are all alone; and you must take hold and help us.
Just get out the buttons for that lady. You know where they are."
Nelly complied, and plunged at once into the button business, and the
braid business, and the pin business, and endless other businesses,
surprising herself by the ease with which she remembered the places
and prices of things. She now and then found herself at a loss in
calculating and making change; but Miss Powell was at hand to help her,
and on the whole she made out very well, and gave satisfaction to her
customers.
Mrs. Kirkland found Nelly so useful that she could not spare her to go
home to dinner; so she stayed, and had her luncheon with Miss Powell,
on bread-and-butter and cold ham and chocolate, which Alice Kirkland
sent down to her mother. She could not get away till dark, and then
went home with a strict injunction from Mrs. Kirkland to come back in
the morning as soon as she had carried round her milk.
"What a useful, handy little creature she is!" said Mrs. Kirkland. "She
is worth more than any young girl I ever had. Who would have believed,
when she came in to return that pattern, early last spring, that we
should be so glad of her help in the store?"
"Nelly had one grand advantage to begin with," said Miss Powell. "She
was brought up to be strictly honest,—never to meddle with the least
thing which does not belong to her. She owes her grandmother an immense
debt of gratitude for that part of her education, at least."
"Yes, indeed. It is wonderful how few girls are to be trusted. They may
not take large sums or things of much consequence, but they are always
meddling. The servant I have now is good for a great many things;
but she constantly helps herself to tea and sugar, and to my thread,
needles and pins. Yet, if I should send her away, it is ten to one the
next comer would be worse,—would have all her faults, without her good
qualities. People often talk of common honesty; but I sometimes think
strict honesty the most uncommon thing in the world."
"I have watched Nelly closely, and I have never seen her take the
smallest trifle. She sometimes asks if she may have empty boxes or bits
of tinsel and ornamental paper; but I have never seen her appropriate
any such thing without leave."
Granny Ryan grumbled not a little at Nelly's long absence, and still
more at her going away again the next day. She complained of the
loneliness of being by herself from morning till night. But the truth
was, she began to grow somewhat jealous of Nelly, and to feel as though
the child was getting above her. Almost every one who has tried to
benefit children of Nelly's class has met with this feeling, and found
it a great hindrance. People do not like to have their children better
off than themselves.
Mrs. Ryan was not so bad in this respect as many others that I have
met; but she could not help a spasm of jealousy now and then. She
raised numberless objections to Nelly's going to the shop,—her own
loneliness, Crummie's needs, and the necessity of Nelly's going after
the slops for her.
But Nelly disposed of all in one way or another. She knew that Mrs.
Kirkland needed her services; and she felt, rather than thought,
that this was a turning-point in her life,—that on her action now
it depended whether she were to grow up intelligent, respectable
and comfortable, or whether she should live, like her mother and
grandmother, just contriving to keep soul and body together, and
tolerated by neighbours and acquaintances because no one knew what
to do with them. She felt that a permanent place in Mrs. Kirkland's
store was the summit of all her wishes; and she began to see that such
a place would presently be incompatible with the care of Crummie.
But leaving this matter to settle itself, or be settled by time and
circumstances, Nelly contented herself with meeting granny's objections
partly by reasoning, partly by jokes and coaxing, ending with—
"And you just dress yourself up by-and-by and come down to the store,
to see your own Nelly up behind the counter, waiting on the ladies, as
grand as Mrs. Kirkland or Miss Alice herself."
"And a fine place, to be sure, for the grand-daughter of an Irish earl,
to be selling such things!" grumbled the old woman. "But I'll not deny
that they have been kind to you; and your purty little fingers do look
more fit for silks and laces than to be handling slop-pails."
"You'll see," said Nelly, exulting in her success. "May-be, some day,
we'll have a nice little shop of our own. Who knows? Then you shall sit
in a nice white cap and a fine shawl, like Mrs. Grayson's own, and take
care of the money; and all the ladies will say, 'What a handsome woman
Mrs. Ryan is!' It's easy to see where Nelly gets her good looks," added
Nelly, archly.
"Get along with your blarney. You'd coax the very birds off the trees!"
said Granny Ryan. "Sure I hope to see you in your own drawing-room
before I die."
"And, then, think what a fine thing to know all sorts of nice work!"
said Nelly. "Well, granny, I'm off. Take good care of yourself and
Crummie, and I'll buy something good for supper when I come home. They
are selling the spare-ribs very cheap."
Nelly succeeded even better to-day than yesterday, and very proud she
felt to be left in the entire charge of the lower shop while Mrs.
Kirkland went out to the bank and Miss Powell was busy up-stairs.
"It is not every little girl I would leave in this way," said Mrs.
Kirkland; "but I know I can trust you, Nelly."
Nelly blushed high, and inwardly determined that she would never do any
thing to forfeit this trust. She made herself as useful as possible
that day and the next, and at the end of the week Mrs. Kirkland
proposed to engage her at least till after the holidays, at a regular
salary of three dollars a week.
"I should like it better than any thing else in the world," said Nelly;
"but I don't exactly see what I am to do. I must carry around the milk
in the morning and at night, and feed the cow. I don't see how I can
come before nine o'clock, now the mornings are so short."
"Could not granny carry round the milk herself in the morning?" asked
Mrs. Kirkland.
"I don't know: she used to, sometimes," said Nelly.
"I think I must go and see granny myself," said Mrs. Kirkland, who was
really anxious to secure Nelly's services, not merely for the child's
sake, but for her own. "I feel as if I must have you, Nelly."
"It is a great chance for me," said Nelly, "a better chance than I
could ever have expected,—and no one knows how I hate to lose it; but
granny is old, and she has her little ways; and you know she brought me
up the best she could, and never let me want for any thing she could do
for me; and I shouldn't feel it was right to go straight against her,
even if I was to gain by it."
"Very true, Nelly; and, as I was saying the other day, you owe granny a
great deal for bringing you up in such strict habits of honesty. Only
for that, I never would have taken you into the store as I have done."
"Granny was very particular about that," said Nelly. "Almost the only
time she ever whipped me, was for taking some fruit from a lady's
garden. She made me go and carry it back and ask pardon. But that was
when I was a little girl," added Nelly, with dignity.
Mrs. Kirkland smiled. "Well, I will call and see granny, in a day or
two. Meantime, you may carry her this red shawl, if you like, and tell
her I sent it to her. There are a few imperfections in it; but it is
warm and soft."
"I think it is lovely," said Nelly. "Granny likes red, and she is
always complaining of cold in her shoulders. If you do come and see
her, I wouldn't contradict her," she added, shrewdly. "I have always
noticed that after she has talked all she likes, and said all she has
to say, she will do almost any thing I want her to; but if I begin to
argue, there is no end to it."
"That is the way with more people than granny," said Mrs. Kirkland,
much amused. "Well, Nelly, I will attend to your hint, and see what I
can do; for I must have you, and that is all about it."
In going home that night, Nelly met with a grand surprise. She was
going to the past-office with some letters for Mrs. Kirkland, when, on
passing her favourite book-store, where the pictures were exhibited,
she saw Mr. Lambert's tall figure and silver beard towering above a
number of people who were looking at a large painting. Nelly had not
seen him for some months, and hardly expected him to recognize her; but
he pounced upon her at once.
"Why, Nelly, is this you? I have been meaning to hunt you up, ever
since I came home. How nicely you look! What are you doing now-a-days?
Making tatting?"
"Making a great many things," said Nelly. "I am in Mrs. Kirkland's
store," she added, feeling two inches taller. "I stay there all the
time now."
"I am glad to find you doing so well. But come, look at my picture and
see how you like it."
Mr. Lambert made way for Nelly, with very little ceremony, among the
crowd of gazers, and placed her in front of the picture. Nelly uttered
a cry of delight. There was Crummie, "as natural as life," cropping
the grass; and surely that was no other than Nelly,—that little girl
with the short black curls and the ragged red petticoat, working at her
tatting, under the chestnut-tree.
"Well, what do you say?" asked Mr. Lambert. "Does it look like you?"
"It looks like Crummie," said Nelly; "but I did not think I was as
pretty as that," she added, ingenuously.
"Then you never looked in the glass," said a gentleman standing by.
"Who is she, Lambert, and where does she live?"
"She is my little friend, Mr. Rowe, and she lives under very sufficient
protection," said Mr. Lambert, gravely, and with a look and tone that
Nelly did not understand. The gentleman laughed and turned away.
"So you like the picture, Nelly?" said Mr. Lambert, after she had
looked a while longer and was proceeding on her errand.
"Yes, very much," answered Nelly; "but I don't like that gentleman
speaking to me so," she added, with an angry flash of her eye. "I think
he was real impudent."
"And so he was. Don't have any thing to say to him, Nelly, in case he
ever speaks to you."
"I never do talk to strangers," said Nelly: "granny told me not to."
"Granny is a wise old woman, and, if you are a wise little girl, you
will be guided by her. But Nelly, I have something to tell you. Do you
know I have sold my picture for two hundred and fifty dollars?"
"Two hundred and fifty dollars!" repeated Nelly, in a tone of awe.
"What a heap of money! I am real glad you have got it, though; and
won't Miss Nelly be pleased?"
"Miss Nelly thinks more of spending the money than of the way it
comes," said Mr. Lambert. "But Nelly, some of this money belongs to
you."
"I don't see how," said Nelly; "I didn't do any thing to earn it, did
I?"
"Well, perhaps not, strictly speaking; but I should never have painted
the picture if you had not given me the idea and served as my model.
So I think some of the price is justly your due." He put his hand into
his pocket and took out his purse. "I should like to give you more, if
I could afford it; but you must accept this; and I hope it may do you a
great deal of good." He put a ten-dollar bill into Nelly's hand as he
spoke.
"I am sure I am much obliged," stammered Nelly, bewildered by this
sudden stroke of good fortune; "but somehow, I don't feel as if I ought
to take it."
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Lambert, lightly. "Don't say any more about that;
but tell me what you mean to do with the money."
"I believe I will buy a load of hay, if granny will let me," said Nelly.
"A load of hay!" exclaimed Mr. Lambert, in surprise. "What could put
that in your head?"
"Granny said if we could afford to buy hay for Crummie, I should not
have to gather swill," said Nelly; "and I should be glad to get rid of
that. And then it would take one thing out of the way of my staying in
the shop."
Mr. Lambert laughed. "You are the most practical child I ever saw,
Nelly. I wish my girl had half your sense. But what about going into
the shop?"
Nelly told him the story.
"Oh, you must go into the shop," said Mr. Lambert. "Tell your
grandmother I shall not paint her portrait if she does not let you go."
Nelly promised. "I do hope she will. It seems such a chance for me, and
I may never have another."
Whether it was Mrs. Kirkland's argument or Mr. Lambert's threat that
prevailed, I cannot say; but certain it is, granny consented that
the ten dollars should be laid out in hay, and that Nelly should
accept Mrs. Kirkland's offer. It was also found possible to make an
arrangement by which little Harry Brown carried round the milk to most
of the customers, receiving his pay in the same commodity.
Granny's remaining objections were quite overcome by her first visit
to the store, where she heard Nelly called "Miss Ryan," and saw her
engaged in work which the old woman acknowledged was "far more fit
for the likes of her than going round to people's back-doors with a
slop-pail."