Now it seemed to her that she had been whirling along for days, weeks—or was it years since Abe Lorimer had put her on the cars at Nine Springs?
“This morning, of course, at nine o’clock, and now it is nearly four o’clock; and oh, I wonder if the baby misses me very much, and what they are all doing at home?” she sighed to herself, feeling strangely desolate and forlorn, as she stood beside the small box containing her belongings, and looked at the towering hills and gloomy pine-clothed slopes about Bratley.
Then a stout woman, with a shawl over her head, came through a small wicket gate by the side of the track, and, advancing straight towards Nell, asked in a rather wheezy tone—
“Are you Miss Lorimer’s new deputy?”
“Yes,” replied Nell, with a sudden terror lest she should be found wanting in some unexpected place, and the fear made her feel for the moment like an interloper, or an impostor, until she remembered the words of the merry, good-natured operator at Nine Springs; then her courage came back, and she was able to smile at Mrs. Nichols, whom she recognized by her appalling squint, according to the description given by Gertrude.
“Well, I’m Mrs. Nichols. You’ve got to board with me, and I’ll make you as comfortable as I can, though, between you and me, I’m getting more than a little tired of deputies, and I’d give a good deal to have Miss Lorimer back again, bless her kind little heart. How is she now, poor lamb?”
“She is getting stronger every day now, and the doctor says she will be able to come back directly the winter is over,” Nell replied cheerfully.
Now there was some one to greet her, she did not feel quite so desolate and forlorn.
“Well, it ain’t over yet by a long way,” sighed the stout woman, “and I can only hope you will not be so faddy in your food as the deputy who is leaving. What I’ve had to bear with that young woman’s appetite these weeks past no one but myself can ever understand. She can’t, or she won’t, eat potatoes, nor turnips, nor carrots; she turns up her snubby nose at leek pie and Irish stew, and as for a bit of pudding, she won’t touch it. All her cry is for new-laid eggs, bread and butter, toasted cheese, and such like. Just think what that means to a poor widow woman, with butter at twenty-five cents a pound, and new-laid eggs at five cents apiece.”
“As dear as that, are they? Well, it is good for the people that have got them to sell, but we will live on potatoes, Irish stews, and that sort of thing, until butter and eggs get cheaper,” replied Nell, with a smile.