NELLY'S SILVER MINE
Nelly would not give any reason, but put the stone carefully back in
her pocket. She was determined not to tell Rob any thing about it,
unless she found the stones; and the more she racked her brains the
more confused she became as to where it was she had seen them. All
the way home she was in a brown study, trying to think where it
could have been. She was in such a brown study that she was walking
straight past Lucinda's door without seeing her, when Lucinda called
her name aloud.
"Why, Nelly," she said, "ain't you going to stop long enough to
speak?"
"She hasn't spoken a word all the way," said Rob, discontentedly. "I
can't get any thing out of her. She's real cross."
"Oh, Rob! Rob! how can you!" cried Nelly: "I wasn't cross a bit."
"Then you're sulky," retorted Rob; "and mamma says that's worse."
"Tut, tut," said Lucinda: "Nelly doesn't look either sulky or cross.
I guess you're mistaken, Rob."
Nelly felt a little conscience-stricken. She knew she had been
thinking hard, all the last hour, about the black stones.
"Never mind, Rob!" she said: "I'll talk now." And she began to tell
Lucinda all about the pictures they had seen at Mr. Kleesman's.
"Oh, yes!" said Lucinda: "I know all about those. My little
sister's got one of them: Mr. Kleesman gave it to her. He's real
fond of little girls. It's a picture he made of the black nurse he
had for his little boy. She's got the baby in her arms."
"Why, has Mr. Kleesman got any children?" exclaimed Nelly, very much
surprised.
"Oh, yes!" said Lucinda: "he's got a wife and two children over in
Germany. That's what makes him so blue sometimes. His wife hates
America, and won't come here."
"Then I should think he'd stay there," said Nelly.
"So should I," said Lucinda; "but they say it's awful hard to make a
living over there; and he's a layin' up money here. He'll go back
one of these days."
"Oh! I wish he'd take me with him," said Rob.
"Rob March! would you go away and leave papa and mamma and me?" said
Nelly.
Rob hung his head. The longing of a born traveller was in his eyes.
"I should come back, Nell," he said. "I shouldn't stay: only just to
see the places."
"Well," said Nelly, slowly, "I wouldn't go away from all of you, not
to see the most beautiful things in all the world; not even to see
the city of Constantinople."
Rob did not answer. He was afraid that there must be something wrong
about him, to be so willing to do what seemed to Nelly such a
dreadful thing. To see Constantinople, and hear the muezzins call
out the hours for prayers from the mosques, Rob would have set off
that very minute and walked all the way.
After Nelly went to bed that night, she lay awake a long time, still
thinking about the black stones. She had put the little piece of
stone on the bureau, and while she was undressing she hardly took
her eyes off it. She recollected just how the place looked where she
saw them. It was in a ravine: there were piles of stones in the
bottom of the ravine, and a good many scattered all along the sides.
There were pine trees and bushes too: it was quite a shady place.
"I should know it in a minute, if I saw it again," said Nelly to
herself; "but where, oh! where was it!"
At last, all in one second, it flashed into her mind. It was one day
when she had started for Rosita later than usual, and had thought
she would take a short cut across the hills; but she had found it
any thing but a short cut. As soon as she had climbed one hill she
found another rising directly before her, and, between the two, a
great ravine, down to the very bottom of which she must go before
she could climb the other hill. She had crossed several of these
ravines,--she did not remember how many,--and had come out at last
on the top of the highest of all the hills above the town: a hill so
steep that she had always wondered how the cows could keep on their
feet when they were grazing high up on it. It was in one of these
ravines that she had seen the black stones; but in which one she
could not be sure. Neither could she recollect exactly where she had
left the road and struck out to cross the hills.
"I might walk and walk all day," thought Nelly, "and never find it.
How shall I ever manage?"
Fortune favored Nelly. The very next day, Billy came to the house to
ask if Mrs. March could spare Nelly to go and stay two days with
Lucinda, while he was away. He had an excellent chance to make some
money by taking a party of gentlemen across the valley and up into
one of the passes in the range, where they were going to fish. He
would be at home the second night: Nelly need stay only over one
night. Lucinda was not well, and Billy did not like to leave her
alone.
Mrs. March said, "Certainly: Nelly could go."
As soon as she told Nelly of the plan, Nelly's heart seemed to leap
in her bosom with the thought:--
"Now that's just the chance for me to look for the stones."
She set off very early, and reached Lucinda's house before eight
o'clock. After she had unpacked her bag, and arranged all her things
in the little room where she was to sleep, she asked Lucinda if
there were any thing she could do to help her.
Lucinda was quilting a big bedquilt, which was stretched out on
chairs and long wooden bars, and took up so much of the room in the
kitchen it was hard to get about.
"Mercy, no, child!" said Lucinda. "I hain't got nothin' to do but
this quilt, an' I expect you ain't much of a hand at quiltin'.
'Twan't my notion to have ye come,--not but what I'm always glad to
see ye; ye know that,--but I wan't afraid to be alone. But Billy
he's took it into his head 'tain't safe for me to be alone here
nights. Now if there's any thing ye want to do, ye jest go 'n' do
it."
"Would it make any difference to you if I were gone all day, so I am
here to sleep?" said Nelly.
"Why, no," replied Lucinda; "not a bit. Did ye want to go into the
town?"
"No," said Nelly; "but I wanted to find a place I saw once, on the
way there. It was a real deep place, almost sunk down in the ground,
full of pines and bushes: a real pretty place. But it wasn't on the
road. I don't know 's I can find it; but I'd like to."
"All right," said Lucinda: "you go off. I'll give ye some lunch in
case ye get hungry. Ye won't be lonesome, will ye, without Rob?"
"Oh, no!" said Nelly: "I like to be all alone out doors."
Then she bade Lucinda good-by, and set off. For a half mile or so,
she walked in the road toward Rosita. She recollected that she had
passed Lucinda's before she turned off from the road. But the more
she tried to remember the precise spot where she had turned off the
more confused she became. At last she sprang out of the road, on the
left hand side, and began running as fast as she could.
"I may as well strike off in one place as another," she thought,
"since I can't remember. It cannot be very far from here."
She climbed one steep hill, and ran down into the ravine beyond it;
then another hill, and another ravine,--no black stones. The sun was
by this time high, and very hot. Nelly had done some severe
climbing.
"On the top of the next hill I'll eat my lunch," she thought.
The next hill was the steepest one yet. How Nelly did puff and pant
before she reached the top; and when she reached it, there was not a
single tree big enough to shade her!
"Oh, dear!" said Nelly; and looked up and down the ravine, to see if
she could spy any shade anywhere. A long way off to the north, she
saw a little clump of pines and oaks. She walked slowly in that
direction, keeping her foothold with difficulty in the rolling
gravel on the steep side of the hill. Just as she reached the first
oak-bush, her foot slipped, and she clutched hard at the bush to
save herself: the bush gave way, and she rolled down, bush and all,
to the very bottom of the ravine. Luckily, it was soft, sandy gravel
all the way, and she was not in the least hurt: only very dirty and
a good deal frightened.
"I'll walk along now at the bottom, where it is level," said Nelly,
"and not climb up till I come to where the trees are."
There had been at some time or other a little stream in this ravine,
and it was in the stony bed of it that Nelly was walking. She
looked very carefully at the stones. They were all light gray or
reddish colored: not a black one among them. She had in her pocket
the little piece Mr. Kleesman had given her: she took it out, and
looked at it again. It was totally unlike all the stones she saw
about her.
"Oh, dear!" sighed Nelly: "I expect I won't find it to-day. I'll
come again to-morrow. At any rate, I'll go to that nice, shady place
to eat my lunch."
It was further than she thought. In Colorado, every thing looks a
great deal nearer to you than it really is: the air is so thin and
light that mountains twenty miles away look as if they were not more
than three or four; and there are a great many funny stories of the
mistakes into which travellers are led by this peculiarity of the
air. They set off before breakfast, perhaps, to walk to a hill which
looks only a little way off; and, after they have walked an hour or
two, there stands the hill, still seeming just as far off as ever.
One of the funniest stories is of a man who had been cheated in this
way so often that at last he didn't believe his eyes any longer as
to whether a distance were long or short; and one day he was found
taking off his shoes and stockings to wade through a little ditch
that anybody could easily step over.
"Why, man alive!" said the people who stood by, "what are you about?
You don't need to wade a little ditch like that! Step across it."
"Ha!" said he, "you needn't try to fool me any more. I expect that
ditch is ten feet wide."
Nelly walked on and on in the narrow stony bed of the dried-up
stream. The stones hurt her feet, but it was easier walking than on
the rolling gravel of the steep sides above. She stopped thinking
about the black stones. She was so hot and tired and hungry, all she
thought of was getting to the trees to sit down. At last she reached
the place just below them. They were much higher up on the hillside
than she had supposed. She stood looking up at them.
"I expect I'll tumble before I get up there," she thought. It looked
about as steep as the side of the roof to a house. But the shade was
so cool and inviting that Nelly thought it worth trying for.
Half-way up her feet slipped, and down she came on her knees. She
scrambled up; and, as she looked down, what should she see, in the
place where her knees pressed into the gravel, but a bit of the
black stone! At first she thought it was the very piece she had had
in her pocket; but she felt in her pocket, and there was her own
piece all safe. She took it out, held the two together, looked at
them, turned them over and over: yes! the stones were really,
exactly the same color! Now she was so excited that she forgot all
about the heat, and all about her hunger.
"This must be the very ravine!" she said, and began to look eagerly
about her for more of the stones. Not another bit could she find! In
her eager search, she did not observe that she was slowly working
down the hill, till suddenly she found herself again at the bottom
of the ravine, in the dried bed of the brook. Then she stood still,
and looked around her, considering what to do. At last she decided
to walk on up the ravine.
"The big pile of them was right in such a deep place as this,"
thought Nelly: "I guess it's farther up."
It was very hard walking, and Nelly was beginning to grow tired and
discouraged again, when lo! right at her feet, in among the gray
stones and the red ones, lay a small black one. She picked it up: it
was of the same kind. A few steps farther on, another, and another:
she began to stoop fast, picking them up, one by one. She had one
hand full: then she looked ahead, and, only a little farther on,
there she saw the very place she recollected so well,--the ravine
full of bushes, and low pine trees, and piles of stones among them.
She had found it! Can you imagine how Nelly felt? You see she
believed that it was just the same thing as if she had found a great
sum of money. How would you feel if you should suddenly find at your
feet thousands and thousands of dollars, if your father and mother
were very poor, and needed money very much? I think you would feel
just as Nelly did. She sat straight down on the ground, and looked
at the stones, and felt as if she should cry,--she was so glad! Then
the thought came into her mind:--
"Perhaps this land belongs to somebody who won't sell it. Perhaps he
knows there is a mine here!" She looked all about, but she could not
see any stakes set up to show that it was owned by any one: so she
hoped it was not.
[Illustration: _There she saw the very place she recollected so
well._ _Page 257._]
Now that the excitement of the search was over, she began to feel
very hungry again, and ate her lunch with a great relish. The
thoughtful Lucinda had put in the basket a small bottle of milk.
Nelly thought she had never tasted any thing so good in her life as
that milk. When you are very thirsty, milk tastes much better than
water. After Nelly had eaten her lunch, she filled her basket with
the black stones, and set off for home. Presently she began to
wonder if she could find her way back again to the spot.
"That would be too dreadful," thought she: "to lose it, now I've
just found it." Then she recollected how, in the story of Hop o' My
Thumb, it said that when he was carried off into the forest he slyly
dropped beans all along the way, to mark the path, and thus found
his way back, very easily by means of them. So she resolved to walk
along in the bed of the stream, till it was time to climb up and
strike off toward Lucinda's, and then to drop red stones all along
the way she went, till she reached the beaten road. She took up the
skirt of her gown in front, and filled it full with little red
stones. Then she trudged along with as light a heart as ever any
little girl had, scattering the stones along the way, like a farmer
planting corn.
When she reached the road, she was surprised to see that she had
come out the other side of Lucinda's house, full quarter of a mile
nearer home.
"Now this isn't anywhere near where I left the road before," she
said. "How'll I ever tell the place?"
At first she thought she would put a bush up in the crotch of a
little pine-tree that stood just there.
"No, that won't do," she said: "the wind might blow it out."
Then she thought she would stick the bush in the sand; but she
feared some horse or cow might munch it and pull it up. At last she
decided to break down a small bough of the pine-tree, and leave it
hanging.
"We can't make a mistake, then, possibly," she thought.
When she reached the house, Lucinda had cleared the bedquilt all
away, and had the table set for supper, though it was only half-past
four o'clock. Nelly was not hungry. It seemed to her only a few
minutes since she ate her lunch.
"Did you find the place, Nelly?" said Lucinda.
"Yes," said Nelly.
"Was it as pretty as it was before?" Lucinda asked.
"Oh, yes!" said Nelly; "but it was awful steep getting down to it. I
kept tumbling down."
"Well, you're the curiousest child ever was!" exclaimed Lucinda.
"Anybody'd think you got walkin' enough in a week without trampin'
off this way."
Nelly did not reply. She felt a little guilty at letting Lucinda
think it was only to find a pretty place she had gone; but she was
sure it would not be best to tell anybody about the black stones
till she had told her father. She had hid them all in a pile near
the pine-tree whose branch she had broken down; and she meant to
pick them up on her way home the next night. In the morning it
looked to Nelly as if it never would be night, she was in such a
hurry to see her father.
"Oh, Lucinda," she said, "do give me something to do! I don't want
to go off to-day. I want to stay with you." So Lucinda gave her some
brown towels to hem, and also let her snap the chalked cord with
which she marked off the pattern on her quilt; and, by help of these
two occupations, Nelly contrived to get through the day, till four
o'clock, when she set out for home. As good luck would have it, when
she was within quarter of a mile from home she saw her father at
work in a field. She jumped over the fence and ran to him.
"Papa! papa!" she said, breathless: "look here!" And she held up her
basket of black stones. "This is the kind of stone that comes where
the silver is. There is a mine underneath it always: Mr. Kleesman
said so. And I've found a mine: I'll show you where it is."
Mr. March laughed very heartily.
"Why, my dear little girl!" he said, "what ever put such an idea
into your head? I don't believe those stones are good for any
thing."
Nelly set down her basket, and pulled her pocket-handkerchief out of
her pocket: the little piece of black stone she had got from Mr.
Kleesman was tied firmly in one corner.
"Look at that, papa," she said, "and see if the stones in the basket
are not just like it." Then she told her father all about the man's
coming into the assayer's office with a bag of stones like that one,
and what Mr. Kleesman said to him.
"Don't you see, papa," she said, vehemently, "that it must be a
mine? Why, there are piles of it: it has all slipped down into the
bottom of this steep place; there used to be a brook down there. I
know it's a mine, papa! And if I found it, it's ours: isn't it?"
Nelly's cheeks were red, and her words came so fast they almost
choked her.
"Nelly, dear," said her father, "don't you recollect that once
before you thought you had found silver ore, you and Rob, up in the
Ute Pass?"
Nelly looked ashamed.
"Oh, papa," she said, "that was quite different. That was when we
were little things. Papa, I know this is a mine. If you'd heard what
Mr. Kleesman said, you'd think so too. He said in his country they
had a proverb, that no mine was good for any thing unless it had a
black hat on its head; and that meant that there were always black
stones on top like this."
Mr. March turned the little bit of black stone over and over, and
examined it carefully.
"I do not know much about minerals," he said. "I think I never saw a
stone like this."
"Nor I either, papa," exclaimed Nelly: "except in this one place. I
know it's a mine, and I'll give it to you all for your own. It's
mine, isn't it, if I found it?"
"Yes, dear, it's yours, unless somebody else had found it before
you."
"I don't believe anybody had," said Nelly; "for there weren't any
stakes stuck down anywhere near; and all the claims have stakes
stuck down round them. Oh, papa! isn't it splendid! now we can have
all the money we want."
Mr. March smiled half sadly.
"My dear little daughter," he said, "there are a great many more
people who have lost all the money they had in the world trying to
get money out of a mine, than there are who have made fortunes in
that way. You must not get so excited. Even if there is a mine in
the place where you found these stones, I don't think I have money
enough to open it and take out the ore. But I will show these stones
to Mr. Scholfield. He knows a great deal about mines."
"Oh, do! do! papa," exclaimed Nelly. "I know it's a mine."
"I am going down there to-night," said Mr. March. "I will carry your
stones, and see what he says. In the mean time, we will not say any
thing about it to anybody. You and papa will just have a little
secret."
When Nelly kissed her father for good-night, she nodded at him with
a meaning glance, and he returned the nod with an equally meaning
one.
"What are you two plotting?" cried Mrs. March. "I see mischief in
both your eyes."
"Oh, it's a little secret we have, Nelly and I," said Mr. March. "It
won't last long: we'll tell you to-morrow."
It turned out that Mrs. March did not have to wait till the next day
before learning the secret. Mr. March got home about midnight from
Mr. Scholfield's. Mrs. March had been sound asleep for two hours:
the sound of Mr. March's steps wakened her.
"Is that you, Robert?" she called.
"Yes," he said. There was something in the tone of his voice which
was so strange that it roused her instantly. She sat up straight in
bed and exclaimed:--
"What is the matter?"
"Nothing," said Mr. March.
"Nonsense!" said Mrs. March: "you can't deceive me. Something has
happened. Come in here this minute and tell me what it is."
Then Mr. March told her the whole story. He had taken Nelly's stones
to Mr. Scholfield, who had said immediately that there was without
doubt a mine in the place where that mineral was found; and, when
Mr. March had told him as nearly as he could from Nelly's
description where the spot was, he had said that no mines had yet
been discovered very near that place, and no claims were staked out.
"Scholfield says we must go immediately and stake out our claim.
He'll go shares with me in digging; and at any rate will see what's
there," said Mr. March.
"Do you believe in it yourself, Robert?" asked Mrs. March. She was
much afraid of new schemes for making money.
"Why, I can't say I'm very enthusiastic about it," replied Mr.
March; "but then I don't know any thing about mines, you see.
Scholfield was near wild over it. He says we've got silver there
sure."
"Will you have to find money to begin with?" asked Mrs. March,
anxiously.
"Well, Sarah, considering that we haven't got any money, I don't see
how I can: do you?" laughed Mr. March. "But Scholfield says that if
I will give him a third of the mine, he'll take another man in, and
they two'll pay for the working it at first. That seems very fair:
doesn't it?"
"I don't know," said Mrs. March. "If the mine really does turn out
to be very valuable, it is giving him a good deal."
"That is true," replied Mr. March. "But, on the other hand, perhaps
it is not worth any thing; and, in that case, Scholfield has the
worst of the bargain. He says, though, he can tell very soon. He has
been in mining a good deal; and he can make his own assays with the
blow-pipe. We're to start very early in the morning, and take Nelly
along to show us the way. The dear child was nearly beside herself
last night."
"So that was your secret: was it?" said Mrs. March.
"Yes, and a very hard one it was for the child to keep too," said
Mr. March. "She was half crazy to tell Rob."
"You'll take him along too: won't you?" asked Mrs. March.
"Oh, yes," said Mr. March: "no more secrets now; that is, not in
this house. We won't have it talked round, if we can help it.
Scholfield says that the minute it is known we've found silver
there, those ravines will just swarm with men prospecting for more
claims."
The next day, Mr. March and Mr. Scholfield and Rob and Nelly set out
immediately after breakfast for the ravine. They stopped at Billy's
house and took him with them. Mr. Scholfield had said to Mr. March,
as they walked along:--
"If Long Billy'll go in with us, I'd rather have him than any man I
know about here. He's as honest 's daylight; I don't think he's
doing much this summer; I think he'll go to work digging right
away."
Wasn't Nelly a proud little girl as she walked ahead of the party?
She kept hold of Rob's hand, and every now and then they would run
so fast that the older people had to run, too, to keep up with them.
"How do you know the way so well, Nelly?" said Mr. Scholfield.
Nelly laughed.
"If you watch closely, you can see what I tell by," she said. "It's
in plain sight."
"Yes, plain sight! plain sight!" shouted Rob, to whom Nelly had
pointed out the little red stones. "It's out of a story."
Mr. Scholfield and Mr. March and Billy all looked around, perplexed;
but they could see nothing.
"Oh, tell us the secret, Guide," said Mr. March. "We are stupid: we
can't find it out."
Then Nelly told them; and as soon as she pointed to the red stones
they wondered very much that they had not noticed them before.
It seemed a very short way to the ravine, this time: Nelly had
reached it before she thought of its being near.
"Why, here it is," she said; "I didn't think we were half way
there."
Then she and Rob sat on the ground and watched the others. Rob was
very quiet. He was a good deal overawed at the idea of a real silver
mine all for their own.
"Do you suppose it's right here, right under our feet, Nell?" said
he, stamping his foot on the ground.
"I dare say," said Nelly. "Perhaps it is all over round here: some
of them are as big as a mile."
"I wonder if they'll let us go down as often as we want to," said
Rob. "They'll have to, won't they, if it's our own mine?"
"That'll be for papa to say," answered Nelly, decidedly. "I've given
it to him. It's his mine."
While the children was thus building their innocent air-castles in a
small way, the brains of the older people were building no less
actively, and on a larger scale. Both Billy and Mr. Scholfield were
much excited. Billy ran from spot to spot, now hammering a stone in
two with his hammer, now digging fiercely into the ground with his
pick-axe. Mr. Scholfield went about picking up the black stones, and
piling them together, till he had quite a monument of them.
"I declare," he said at last, "it beats me that this place hasn't
ever been found before, much 's this country's been prospected over
and over. I don't know what to make of it. But there isn't a sign of
a claim here for miles: I know that."
"Well, I'll tell yer what I'm a thinkin'," said Billy. "I'm a
thinkin' that 's fur back 's them fust prospectin' days there was a
creek in here; 'n' thet's the reason there didn't nobody look here.
I've heern it said hundreds o' times in town thet there wan't no use
lookin' along these ridges; they'd all been looked over thorough,
'n' there wan't nothin' in 'em. But we've struck a silver mine,
sure: I hain't any doubt of it. Let's name her 'The Little Nelly.'"
Mr. March's face grew red. He did not like the idea of having a mine
called after Nelly; but he did not want to hurt Billy's feelings.
Before he could speak, Mr. Scholfield cried out:--
"Good for you, Billy! That's what we'll call it! That's a name to
bring good luck. 'The Little Nelly!' and may she turn out not so
'little,' after all; and the first bucketful of ore we draw up,
Nelly, we'll drink your health, and christen the mine."
Nelly did not quite understand what all this meant.
"Did you mean that I am to name the mine, sir?" she said.
"No," said Mr. Scholfield: "we meant that we were going to name it
for you, by your name. But you can name it, if you like. That would
be luckier still. Don't you like to have it called by your name?"
Nelly hesitated.
"I think I would rather not have it named after me," she said: "some
of the mines have such dreadful names. But I know a name I think
would be a real pretty name."
"What's that?" said her father.
"The Good Luck," said Nelly.
Billy clapped his knee hard with his hand.
"By jingo!" said he, "that's the best name ever was given to a mine
yet. 'The Good Luck' it shall be; and good luck it was to you,
Nelly, the day you struck it. Old Pine he said, one day last
spring, mebbe you'd find a mine, when I was a tellin' him how you
'n' Rob was allers lookin' for one."
"But I wasn't looking for this, Billy," said Nelly. "I gave up
looking for one a long time ago, when we began to sell the eggs. It
was just an accident that I happened to remember the black stones in
here."
"That's the way some of the best mines have been found," said Mr.
Scholfield: "just by sheer accident. There was a man I knew, in
California, had his mule run away from him one day: it was somewhere
in that Tuolomne region; and if that mule didn't run straight down
into a gulch that was just washed full of free gold,--and the fellow
had been walking in it some time before he noticed it! There's a
heap o' luck in this world."
"Yes," said Mr. March, "there's a great deal of luck; but there is a
great deal which is set down to luck which isn't luck. Now, if my
little girl here hadn't had the good-will and the energy to try to
earn some money for her mother and me, she wouldn't have been
searching for a short cut to Rosita over these hills, and would
never have found this mine."
"That's so," said Mr. Scholfield, looking admiringly at Nelly.
"She's a most uncommon girl, that Nelly of yours. I think we ought
to call the mine after her; it's hers."
"No," said Mr. March: "I like her name for it best. Let us call it
'The Good Luck.'"
Mrs. March was watching for her husband and children when they came
down the lane. She had been much more excited about the silver mine
than she had confessed to Mr. March. All day long she had been
unable to keep it out of her mind. The prospect was too tempting.
"Why should it not have happened to us, as well as to so many
people," she thought. "Oh! if we only could have just money enough
to give Rob and Nelly a good education, I would not ask for any
thing more. And, even if this is not very much of a mine, it might
give us money enough for that." With such hopes and imaginations as
these Mrs. March's mind had been full all day long; and, when she
saw Mr. March and Rob and Nelly coming toward the house, she felt
almost afraid to see them, lest she should see disappointment
written on their faces.
Not at all. Rob and Nelly came bounding on ahead, and, as they drew
near the door, they shouted out:--
"The Good Luck! The Good Luck! It is named 'The Good Luck.'"
"They wanted to call it 'The Little Nelly,' but Nelly wouldn't,"
said Rob. "I don't see why. If I'd found it, I'd have called it 'The
Rob,' I know. They didn't ask me to let them call it for me. If they
had, they might and welcome."
"It is really a mine, then?" said Mrs. March, looking at her
husband.
"Yes, Sarah, I think it is," he replied. "If Scholfield and Billy
know,--and they seem to be very sure,--there is good promise of
silver there; and Nelly herself has named it 'The Good Luck.'"
"Oh, Nelly! did you, really?" exclaimed Mrs. March. "You dear
child!" And she threw both arms around Nelly, and gave her a great
hug. "That's a lovely name. I do believe it will bring luck."
"I didn't want it named after me," said Nelly. "It isn't as if it
was a live thing--"
"Subjunctive mood, dear! 'as if it were,'" interrupted Mrs. March.
"As if it were," repeated Nelly, looking confused. "I wish they'd
left the subjunctive mood out of the grammar. I sha'n't ever learn
it! It isn't as if it were a live thing like a baby or a kitten. I
wouldn't mind having such things called after me, but some of the
mines have the awfullest names, mamma: real wicked names, that I
shouldn't dare to say."
"Well, they'll call it after you, anyhow, Nell," cried Rob. "Billy
said so, coming home."
"They won't either," said Nelly, "when it was my own mine, only I
gave it to papa, and I asked them not to; I think it would be real
mean."
"Oh, I don't mean Mr. Scholfield and Billy," said Rob: "they called
it 'The Good Luck' as soon as you said so; but the men around town.
They'll hear it was you found it; and they'll call it 'The Nelly,'
always: you see if they don't."
"Rob, don't tease your sister so," said Mrs. March.
"Why, does that tease you, Nell?" asked Rob, pretending to be very
innocent. "I was only telling you what Billy said."
"I don't believe it," said Nelly: "do you, papa?"
"No," replied Mr. March. "I do not see why they should give it any
other name than the one the owners give it."
"Well, you'll see," said Rob. "There are ever so many mines that go
by two or three different names. There's one way off in the north
somewhere, where Billy used to haul ore, is called 'Bobtail,' some
of the time, and 'Miss Lucy,' some of the time. They tried to change
'Bobtail' into 'Miss Lucy,' and they couldn't."
"Couldn't!" exclaimed Nelly: "what do you mean by that?"
"Why, the people wouldn't," said Rob, saucily: "that's all."
"'That's all' about a great many things in this world, Rob,"
laughed his mother. "'Couldn't' is very apt to be only another word
for 'wouldn't' with a little boy I know."
Rob laughed, and left off teasing Nelly about the name of her mine.