Nell, of Shorne Mills

E-text prepared by Roger Frank, Brownfox, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)

Better Than Life, A Life's Mistake, Once in a Life, 'Twas Love's Fault, etc.
PUBLISHERS :: :: :: NEW YORK 1898

Dick, how many are twenty-seven and eight?
The girl looked up, with narrow eyes and puckered brow, from the butcher's book, which she was laboriously checking, at the boy who leaned back on the window seat picking out a tune on a banjo.
Thirty-nine, he replied lazily but promptly, without ceasing to peck, peck at the strings.
She nodded her thanks, and traveled slowly up the column, counting with the end of her pencil and jotting down the result with a perplexed face.
They were brother and sister, Nell and Dick Lorton, and they made an extremely pretty picture in the sunny room. The boy was fair with the fairness of the pure Saxon; the girl was dark—dark hair with the sheen of silk in it, dark, straight brows that looked all the darker for the clear gray of the eyes which shone like stars beneath them. But the eyes were almost violet at this moment with the intensity of her mental effort, and presently, as she raised them, they flashed with a mixture of irritation and sweet indignation.
Dick, if you don't put that banjo down I'll come over and make you. It's bad enough at most times; but the 'Old Folks at Home' on one string, while I'm trying to check this wretched book, is intolerable, and not to be endured. Put it down, Dick, or I'll come over and smash both of you!
He struck a chord, an exasperating chord, and then resumed the more exasperating peck, peck.