“That’s a heavy bundle for you to carry, Ruth!” said Harry; “it is almost as big as yourself.”
“I shouldn’t mind carrying it were it twice as heavy and big,” cried the peasant child, looking up with a bright, happy smile. “Coals be terrible dear, and we’ve not a stick of wood left in the shed; and mother, she gets so chilly of an evening. There’s nothing she likes so well as a hot cup of tea and a good warm fire; your dear mamma gives us the tea, and you see I’ve the wood for boiling the water. Won’t mother be glad when she sees my big fagots; and wasn’t I pleased when I heard the wind blowing last night, for I knew I should find branches strewn about in the morning!”
“Ah,” cried Harry, “that reminds me of the proverb, ‘’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good.’”
“Harry,” whispered Nina to her brother, “don’t you think that you and I might help Ruth to fill her poor mother’s little wood-shed?”
“What! pick up sticks, and carry them in fagots on our backs? How funny that would look!” exclaimed Harry.
“We should be doing some good,” replied Nina. “Don’t you remember that nurse said that the wind has its work to do, as we have ours? If it’s an ill wind that does nobody good, it must be an ill child that does good to no one.”
Merrily and heartily Harry and Nina set about their labor of kindness. And cheerfully, as the children tripped along with their burdens to the poor woman’s cottage, Nina repeated her old nurse’s proverb, “’Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good.”
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation errors repaired.