“It will be very nice to feel that I have got a permanent post, and work that is really my own to do at last, for I am getting a little tired of being moved on so often.”
“Poor child! I only wish it was a nicer place than Camp’s Gulch at which you were going to settle down. However, we can only hope it will be for the best; and now I must go back to that bread, for what it will be like is more than I can imagine,” said Mrs. Nichols, rising in a great hurry, as she suddenly remembered the lump of dough which was warming in the pan before the fire, ready and waiting to be baked.
After that the days were fuller than ever. Nell scrubbed out her office until it was clean as hands could make it, and the men about the depot declared themselves afraid to set foot inside the door. Then she polished everything which could by any amount of rubbing be induced to shine, and when everything was done which love could suggest or ingenuity devise, she sat down to wait with what patience she might the day and hour of Gertrude’s arrival.
Mrs. Nichols had also been having a grand upheaval in preparation for the coming of Gertrude. Nell’s little wooden-walled bedroom had been turned out and scrubbed, while Nell herself was occupying the draughty old loft, until the day of her departure for Camp’s Gulch.
It was not a comfortable sleeping-apartment, certainly, but it was far better than the room in which she had had to sleep at Blue Bird Ridge, and, never having been brought up to luxury, she thought less of discomforts than many other girls might have done.
The condition of her wardrobe troubled Nell rather at this juncture. Ever since coming to Bratley she had hoarded the remnant of salary left over after board and lodging were paid for, and from this small surplus had paid Mrs. Lorimer for the brown coat and cap which had stood her in such good stead all the winter. Gertrude had cried out hotly against taking the money, declaring that the cost of the coat had been earned three times over during the weeks when Nell toiled for them all at Lorimer’s Clearing; but Mrs. Lorimer had decided to keep it, and so there was nothing more to be said.
Now the days were getting brighter, and the merciless spring sunshine would show up the shabbiness of the old blue merino, which had to serve for Sundays and weekdays alike. Nell just yearned for a new frock, but the difficulty was how to get it. If she had been expert at her needle, as some girls were, she might have bought a few yards of cloth and put a frock together for herself; but, although she could manage to sew a straight seam, and set on a patch with a fair degree of neatness, and might even have done the sewing of a frock, if it had been put ready for her, the cutting-out and fixing were quite beyond her capabilities.
There were, of course, the thirty dollars belonging to the stranger, which she had found under the settle at the Lone House; but Nell would have gone about in actual rags, rather than have touched this sum, which she was always hoping to be able to return to the rightful owner.
On the evening of the day before Gertrude’s arrival, the baggage-clerk came up to Nell as she was leaving her office. He had a long, thin dress-box in his hand, and looked rather more sheepish and dejected than usual.
“There’s this box come for you on the night cars from Lytton, Miss Hamblyn, and I would have taken it over to Mrs. Nichols’s place for you, but I’m just loaded down like a pack-donkey to-night,” he explained, in a tone of deprecating apology.