“I’ll tell you what I mean to do, when I get my dollars saved. I’m going to find out some learned person, and offer to do her housework in return for teaching. Then I shall reap a double benefit, for no two people have their housework done the same way; so I shall find out fresh ways of doing things, and get my education as well.”
“You would certainly get cheated,” objected Gertrude. “The person would be sure to get all her housework properly done, but you would not get your share of education.”
“Then I should not stay,” replied Nell, stoutly. “I may be ignorant, but I generally know when I am being cheated.”
“Don’t get in such a state of agitation; you have not won the hundred dollars yet, you know,” laughed Gertrude. Then Nell laughed also; and they rambled on through the sweet spring sunshine, chattering of the present, making plans for the future, and thoroughly enjoying the brief resting spell in their hard-working lives.
The day went all too quickly, as such days are apt to do; then came Monday morning, and Nell went back to Camp’s Gulch to take up her lonely life again, and zealously hoard the dollars which were to buy her a store of book-learning later.
It was a huge relief to feel that she had restored the thirty dollars and the portrait to their rightful owner, only for some weeks she had an unrestful feeling, from fear of encountering the man whom old Joey had identified for her.
About a month after her visit to Bratley, Joey Trip, who had as usual spent his evening leisure at the Settlement, returned in a state of great excitement, brimming over with news.
Mr. Brunsen had sold his copper interest to a syndicate for five thousand dollars, and then had promptly disappeared, before the unhappy syndicate had had time to find out that they had been most deliberately hoaxed, and that the seam, which had looked so rich and thick, was nothing but cleverly doctored shale, the copper ore having apparently worn itself out. Of course it might recur again farther in, but that had to be found out.
Meanwhile the syndicate were about the maddest lot of men in the district, and vowed all sorts of vengeance on Brunsen and his companions, if only they could be caught.
Nothing was heard of them, however. The weeks of summer sped on. June, July, and then August wore away, until at last September came in with fervid but shortening days, and Nell began to realize that it was almost a year since she had left the Lone House on Blue Bird Ridge, and set out to try her fortune in the great world.