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"How on earth did she ever make Wellington?" demanded the aristocratic Nettie Brocton, disapproval spoiling her leaky dimples. "Girls, you are horrid!" declared Judith to the rescue. "You all know the freaks love Jane. It's her angel face," and Judith playfully stroked the cheek into which streaks of bright pink threatened admission of guilt that Jane really knew the uncouth country girl.
At the table, working rapidly as usual, sat Nettie. Sometimes she turned a momentary glance of mingled curiosity and wonder upon her sister. Evidently she did not interfere with this development of sorrow.
"Take the air, indeed!" muttered Susan, watching from the kitchen window. "A whole lot of fresh air she'll get in Mis' McGuire's kitchen!" With another glance to make sure that Mrs. Nettie Colebrook was safely behind the McGuires' closed door, Susan crossed the kitchen and lifted the napkin of the breakfast tray. "Humph!" she grunted angrily, surveying the almost untouched breakfast.
Lucy Wodehouse was chief directress of these important operations. Her sister had accompanied her, partly to admire Lucy's work, and partly to call at the cottage and see how Nettie was going on. Mr Wodehouse himself had come merely for the pride and pleasure of seeing how much they were indebted to his little girl; and the attendance of the curate was most easily explainable.
She told herself arbitrarily that Edward Dunsack had lied for the purpose which his conduct afterward made clear but her very feeling was proof that she believed he had spoken the truth. She was a victim of an uneasy curiosity to see... she made a violent mental effort and recaptured the name Nettie Vollar.
"I believe you eat the Bible and sleep on the Bible," said the woman, with a faint smile, taking at the same time a corner of her apron to wipe away a stray tear which had gathered in her eye. "I am glad it rests you, Nettie." "And you, mother." "Sometimes," Mrs. Mathieson answered, with a sigh. "But there's your father going to bring home a boarder, Nettie." "A boarder, mother! What for?"
He went to church, and he read at home; he changed his behaviour to her mother as well as to herself, and he brought Barry to his bearings. What more did Nettie want? One Sunday, late in May, Nettie had stayed at home alone while the rest of the family were gone to church, the neighbour down stairs having promised to look after her.
They sit under the drop-light with their fancy-work and talk, or Nettie plays her new pieces over for her mother. I could play as well as Nettie if I had time to practice, but mother don't seem to care anything at all about my music. We might keep a girl like other people. Father is able to. I think it is too bad." "Oh, don't Mag! Don't say any more," said Florence.
What was ahead of the chums did trouble them. Their future school life was a mystery. There was no prophet to tell them of the exciting and really wonderful things that were to happen to them at Briarwood during the coming term. "Oh, dear me!" complained Nettie Parsons, "I never can do it." "'In the bright Lexicon of Youth, there is no such word as "fail,"" quoted Mercy Curtis, grandiloquently.
But Nettie now had taken possession of the prosaic place, and, all unconscious of that spiritual occupation, was as busy and as excited about Mrs Smith's lodgings at St Roque's Cottage as if it were an ideal home she was preparing, and the life to be lived in it was the brightest and most hopeful in the world.
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