CHAPTER XIV
Promoted
APRIL was in. There were sheets of flowers—mauve, yellow, pink, and purple—in the open spaces of the forest ground at Bratley. The streams were swollen and muddy from the melting snows on the higher hills, while the sun shone more warmly and the day grew longer.
Nell, child of nature that she was, grew entranced with the beauty and promise all about her, and but for the duty which chained her fast to the little office at the depot for twelve hours out of every twenty-four, she would have been out-of-doors the whole day long.
Her office was a perfect bower of beauty in these spring days, for so many people brought her flowers and other offerings of a similar nature, in return for kindly offices of one sort and another which she had at different times performed.
Having no exalted notions regarding her own dignity, she was always ready to help other people without fear of lowering herself thereby.
When Mrs. Nichols fell ill with a bad cold early in March, Nell got up at five o’clock in the morning and did the week’s wash before going to her office. More than once, too, she trimmed the lamps at the depot, when the baggage-clerk, whose duty it was, smashed his thumb. Many, also, were the bits of needlework, stocking-darning, patching, and so forth, which she performed during office hours for over-taxed mothers of families.
Now she was reaping the reward of her small services; and to her, lonely as she had been, it was inexpressibly sweet to earn the loving-kindness of those about her. Having no people of her own, she was fain to adopt everyone in any sort of need who crossed her path; and she was by far the most popular person in Bratley during that sweet springtime.
There were two drops of bitterness in her cup, however. The first was the fear lest her grandfather should find her out, or be himself found out and sent to prison on account of some of that old-time law-breaking of which he had been guilty; the other drawback to her happiness lay in the fact that Gertrude was to come back at the middle of the month to take up her work again, and then she, Nell, must find some other occupation.
As yet she had made no plans for the future, except to arrange with Mrs. Nichols that she would stay there for a week or two after her deputy work was done, while looking round for work of her own.
Meanwhile the days were as full of work as it was possible to crowd them, and every night Nell went to bed so tired that she fell asleep directly her head touched the pillow. There was her own office work, which had grown more exacting now that spring had opened sources of employment which had been closed during winter; then she had sewing to do for herself and her neighbours; while every spare minute was filled in with efforts to increase her scanty store of book-learning.