"That doesn't excuse him, either."
"Perhaps," she said, "if you and I, mine Jock, were made as he is we might do something worse than he has done. People laugh at him! He mayn't be right. I'm not saying that he is right; but I am saying that I am not going to hurt his feelings. The Lord has done that enough already."
And the third one, never told by Mrs. Opie, and a fortunate thing it was for us, had to do with her skill in the use of a pen. She was still a very little child, lying on a rug by the fire, reading out of the Bible, as I sat at the desk looking over some accounts which would not come right. There was the matter of a draft for five pounds, with my own name to it, which I had certainly no remembrance of ever having signed.
"What's the matter, Jock?" said Nancy, seeing my knit brow.
"They won't come right, Little Flower," I answered.
She came over to me and looked at the accounts.
"Nancy made one just like Jock's," she said.
"What?" I cried, with consternation.
"Nancy—made—one—just—like—Jock's," she repeated. "A poor lady who was very sick," she explained, "was by here one day you had gone. I made one for her."
"Nancy," I said, taking her on my knee, "do you know that it is a crime to sign another person's name without his leave?"