“Now, that is what I call real good news!” exclaimed Mrs. Nichols, briskly. “And I will just give Sam Peters a piece of my mind for coming along and frightening me in the fashion he did,” she added resentfully.
“But I told him it was good news,” said Nell, whose colour had come back by this time.
“So he said; but he also informed me that you went white in the face, and that your lips were quivering as if you were going to cry. He even had the impudence to tell me that he ought to know how people looked when they were going to cry, because he’d got seven children.”
Nell laughed merrily. “Judging from the frequency with which his children do cry, I really think that he ought to know. I’m afraid, too, that I did feel rather like tears, for it was such a wonderful thing to me that my need should be met like this, and that I should not have to be one day out of employment,” she added, in a graver tone.
Mrs. Nichols sniffed dubiously. “I would have been glad enough to have you for a few weeks, or even a few months, come to that. And perhaps by waiting you might have found something better. Camp’s Gulch is a dreadful rough place, and I should think you would be nearly the only woman there.”
“Not quite so bad as that, I hope,” said Nell, drawing a rather wry face. “But don’t you see that my especial delight in the matter is because I shall be only fifteen miles from Bratley, and sometimes I can come over and spend Sundays with you and Gertrude?”
“There is that to be considered, certainly,” admitted Mrs. Nichols, tacitly consenting to be mollified. “Only, so far as roughness goes, you would have been better off at Roseneath, or any of the little places this side of Lytton.”
“Never mind; I have had to get used to a lot of roughness in my time, so perhaps I shall not feel it as a better brought-up girl might have done,” Nell said hopefully. And in her heart she determined to make the best of it, however rough and disagreeable the place might be.
“Your life may have been rough of late, but I guess you’ve been as well reared as most girls. Parson Hamblyn’s daughter would know as much as most what true refinement is, I fancy,” the stout woman said, with a toss of her head.
But Nell was not going to be drawn into any sort of argument on that score, for she had already had to find by experience that she was no match for Mrs. Nichols, who could talk her down in a very short time, so she only said quietly—