I shall not tell of all her difficulties and troubles, nor how, when using the ladder of Spelling, she found it several times give way, and drop her down on the floor. The process of learning is a slow one, as every one is likely to know who has done enough of the papering work to be able to read this book;—and as for that troublesome ladder, A. L. O. E. will not venture to say that she has never had a tumble from it herself. I need only mention, as regards lame Nelly, that in the end, after days and weeks of patient labour, her house was very neatly papered indeed.
Matty had far less trouble. The ladder of Spelling seemed made on purpose to suit her convenience; she mounted the steps with greater ease than even the active Dick could do. Her walls were soon covered with fairies; but, as Lubin observed, no one could think the cottage of Head well furnished with a paper so poor and thin,—you could almost see the bricks through it. Matty was, however, well pleased; and even, in the blindness of self-love, had some hopes of the silver crown. Pride flattered her skill and her quickness, and was always a welcome guest at her cottage as well as in Dick's. Neither the brother nor the sister yet knew the evils that might arise from their using the paste of Emulation.
And how fared poor Lubin meantime? He worked slowly, by fits and starts, whenever the humour was on him, but it seemed to his brother and sisters as if his walls would never be papered. Nelly, after her own day's work, would carry the ladder to Lubin, but he constantly refused to use it.
"What nonsense it is," he would angrily say, "to have words sounded in one way, and spelt in another. I wish that the fellow who made that ladder had been well ducked in the brook of Bother."
"But as it has been made, and we've no other," observed Nelly, "would it not be wise to make the best of it?"
By her gentle persuasion Lubin more than once attempted to mount the first step, but it always gave way beneath him; he never could remember of the to, too, and two, which was the right one to use.
At last, catching up the ladder in despair, Lubin flung it out of his door.
"Let it go—I should like to break it to bits and make a bonfire of it!" he cried; "I can paper my rooms without it."
"Oh, no; not the upper parts," suggested Nelly.
"I don't care for the upper parts, I'll leave them as they are," answered Lubin. "If the bricks and mortar are ugly, no one need look at them, say I."