“FOR ME? BUT I DON’T EXPECT ANY PARCEL!”
When the box was unfastened, the lifted lid showed white tissue paper; when that also had been lifted, there was revealed a coat and skirt of dark grey cloth, and two blouses, one white, the other with little red spots on a white ground.
For a minute or two Nell stood speechless, staring into the box, and in the background Mrs. Nichols stood silent also, only now there was a half-anxious look on her face, as if she feared how Nell was going to take this love-prompted offering, which might, however, prove so hurting to her sensitive pride as to seem almost like an insult.
But Mrs. Nichols need not have been afraid. Nell turned presently, her face white to the lips, and her eyes shining like two stars.
“Who did it? You?” she asked, jerking out the words in an unsteady fashion.
“Only a part, everybody did something; even Sam Peters’ wife managed a dollar, because she said she didn’t know how she would have got through this winter if it hadn’t been for the help you had been with the mending. Mrs. Pringle, she gave two dollars; and so on all round. You see, we all owe you something, dear, in the way of kindness, for you have always stood ready to help everyone who needed it. We got the schoolmistress to buy the things, for we figured it out that a woman who knew so well what to buy for herself, would know how to set about suiting other people with clothes.”
Nell sat down suddenly and cried as she had not done for many a long day past. She had worn her poor shabby clothes with brave, uncomplaining patience, and had never dreamed that other people would feel sorry for her because of them. But this delicate and unobtrusive kindness, which had stepped in to prevent her from going in her worn garments to the new home, touched her keenly, and she, who had no family, began to feel as if all the world were her kin, and that loneliness was a word out of date and obsolete.