She was rather glad of the slack time, since it gave her a breathing spell, and enabled her to do many things which were so impossible when in full tide of work.
Sometimes she sighed a little ruefully over her inability to find more time for reading, and told herself that she would soon forget what little she had learned before. But in reality she was making great strides in all sorts of knowledge, and learning some of the deep lessons of life, which no books could have taught her.
The loft where she and Flossie slept was almost as bare, although more weather-tight than the one in which she had slept at the Lone House. But Nell had put her bed near the pipe of the kitchen stove, which came up through the loft, and so she and Flossie were comfortably warm even in the bitterest weather.
One use Nell made of her spare time was to rearrange her premises for the greater convenience of her work. She got Sam Peters to make her a big store cupboard, which was placed in one corner of the kitchen, and saved her endless runs into the sitting-room, where formerly she had been obliged to keep her groceries, tubs of lard, and that sort of thing. Then she made a great stock of marmalade, for the huckleberry jam was almost gone, and her store of apples, which had been brought from Lorimer’s Clearing, was dwindling fast.
The wood shed was getting empty too, for although Patsey worked hard all day Saturday, he could not in one day supply the drain of seven. So, drawing a pair of old woollen stockings over her shoes, Nell sallied out to the clear crisp cold of the winter afternoons, armed with an axe, a saw, and an old box on runners which did duty for a sledge, and enjoyed blissful hours in chopping and sawing among the dead wood on the slope behind the house.
“Nell, dear, you have all the drudgery; it is too bad! I would come and help, only I can’t leave mother,” Gertrude said, on the first afternoon when Nell returned, flushed and sparkling, from her labours in the snow.
“It isn’t drudgery, it is a real holiday, only I wish the children could enjoy it too,” Nell answered wistfully, for the two little boys and Flossie had bad colds, and were not able to stir out of doors.
“I’m afraid I should not think it such a treat as you do,” said Gertrude, shivering a little.
She was looking pale and thin, while there were dark rings round her eyes, brought there by overmuch confinement in a sick-room.
“Then it is a very good thing that I am the one who is free to go. I had been feeling rather mean, because I was having all the fun, but this, of course, restores the balance,” laughed Nell, as she divested herself of her outdoor garments.