"I'll ask your father," replied Mrs. March. "I don't think he'd be willing: but if we could get a little money that way, it would be very nice. We don't need half the eggs."
When Mrs. March told her husband of Nelly's proposition, his cheeks flushed.
"What a child Nelly is!" he exclaimed. "I can't bear to have her go round among those rough miners. I've often thought myself of carrying things up there to sell; but I thought my time was worth more on the farm than any thing I could make selling eggs. Oh, Sarah!" he exclaimed, "I never thought we should come to such a pass as this."
"Now, Robert, don't be foolish," said Mrs. March, gayly. "There isn't the least disgrace in selling butter and eggs. I'd as soon earn a living in that way as in any other. But I wouldn't like to have Nelly run any risk of being rudely treated."
"I don't believe she would be," said Mr. March; "her face is enough to make the roughest sort of a man good to her. You know how Billy worshipped her; and he's a pretty rough fellow on the surface. I think we might let her try it once, and see what happens."
And so it came to pass, that, early in the third summer of their stay in Wet Mountain Valley, Nelly set off one morning at six o'clock with a basket on her arm, holding three dozen of eggs and two pounds of butter, which she was to carry up into Rosita to sell. Rob pleaded hard to go too, but his father would not consent.
"Nelly will do better by herself," he said. "You will be sure to get into some scrape if you go."
"I don't care," said Rob, as he bade Nelly good-by: "you just wait till trout time: see if I don't make him let me go then. I can make more money selling trout than you can off eggs, any day. A gentleman told me one day when he drove by where I was fishing, one day last summer, that he'd give me forty cents a pound for all I had in my basket; and I told him I wasn't fishing to sell: I was real mad. I didn't know then we were going to sell things; but, if we are, I may as well sell trout; the creek's full of them."
"Well, we are going to sell things, I tell you," said Nelly: "I don't know what else there is for us to do. We haven't got any money; I think papa's real worried, and mamma too; and you and I've just got to help. It's too bad! I don't see what God made grasshoppers for."
"To catch trout with," said Rob, solemnly: "there isn't any thing else half so good."