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"When is your aunt coming, Nettie?" asked Ruth. "To see you graduate, my dear," replied the Southern girl, smiling. "And wait till she meets you, Ruthie Fielding! She'll near about love you to death!" "Oh, everybody loves Ruth. Why shouldn't they?" cried Belle. "But everybody doesn't give her a fortune, as Nettie's Aunt Rachel did," laughed Heavy.
You never would dare to lay your head upon her lap, and you would not think of kissing her, any more than you would a stone post. See! she creeps up to Nettie's bed, and a heavy frown gathers on her wrinkled face as she spies the letter on her bosom.
When Susan was gone, that parting arrow did quiver for a moment in Nettie's heart; but the brave little girl had, for that one night, a protection which her sister wist not of. After the door closed, Nettie fell back once more into that hour of existence which expanded and opened out the more for every new approach which memory made to it.
"Everything's to do," said Mrs. Mathieson. He swore at her. "Why can't you answer a plain question? I say, what's to do?" "There's all Nettie's things in the room at present. They are all to move up stairs, and the red bedstead to bring down." "No, mother," said Nettie, gently, "all my things are up stairs already; there's only the cot and the bed, that I couldn't move." Mrs.
Mathieson, wanting Nettie, went to the foot of the garret stairs to call her, and stopped, hearing Nettie's voice singing. It was a clear, bird-like voice, and Mrs. Mathieson listened; at first she could not distinguish the words, but then came a refrain which was plain enough.
And indeed she had not a great deal of voice, and still less science, Nettie's life having been too entirely occupied to leave much room for such studies. Yet somehow her song touched the doctor's heart. He forgave her entirely that walk with the curate. He went in softly, less impatient than usual with her crazy Quixotism. A child a sick child especially was a bearable adjunct to the picture.
The doctor saw the heaving of her breast, the height of self-restraint which could go no further. He went back into the parlour like a true lover, and spied no more upon Nettie's hour of weakness. Without her, it looked a vulgar scene enough in that little sitting-room, from which the smoke of Fred's pipe had never fairly disappeared, and where Fred himself had lain in dismal state.
Those commonplace unalterable days, varied in nothing but the natural fluctuations of making and mending, those evenings with Fred sulky by the fire always sulky, because deprived by Nettie's presence of his usual indulgences; or if not so, then enjoying himself after his dismal fashion in his own room, with most likely Susan bearing him company, and the little maiden head of the house left all by herself in the solitary parlour, passed on one by one, each more tedious than the other.
"You shall eat something first," said her friend; and she raised Nettie's head upon another pillow, and began to feed her with the spoon. "It is good for you. You must take it. Where is your father? Don't talk, but tell me. I will do everything right." "He is at work on Mr. Jackson's new house." "Is he there to-day?" "Yes." Mme.
As he dashed along over the echoing road he had time to imagine to himself how Nettie might at that very moment be badgered and persecuted; and when he had seen his patient and done his duty, and with the lamps lighted in the drag, and the frosty wind blowing keen on his face, and the lights of Carlingford cheering him on in the distance, was once more returning, an impatience, somewhat akin to Nettie's, suddenly came upon the doctor.
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