"What's that?" said her father.
"The Good Luck," said Nelly.
Billy clapped his knee hard with his hand.
"By jingo!" said he, "that's the best name ever was given to a mine yet. 'The Good Luck' it shall be; and good luck it was to you, Nelly, the day you struck it. Old Pine he said, one day last spring, mebbe you'd find a mine, when I was a tellin' him how you 'n' Rob was allers lookin' for one."
"But I wasn't looking for this, Billy," said Nelly. "I gave up looking for one a long time ago, when we began to sell the eggs. It was just an accident that I happened to remember the black stones in here."
"That's the way some of the best mines have been found," said Mr. Scholfield: "just by sheer accident. There was a man I knew, in California, had his mule run away from him one day: it was somewhere in that Tuolomne region; and if that mule didn't run straight down into a gulch that was just washed full of free gold,—and the fellow had been walking in it some time before he noticed it! There's a heap o' luck in this world."
"Yes," said Mr. March, "there's a great deal of luck; but there is a great deal which is set down to luck which isn't luck. Now, if my little girl here hadn't had the good-will and the energy to try to earn some money for her mother and me, she wouldn't have been searching for a short cut to Rosita over these hills, and would never have found this mine."
"That's so," said Mr. Scholfield, looking admiringly at Nelly. "She's a most uncommon girl, that Nelly of yours. I think we ought to call the mine after her; it's hers."
"No," said Mr. March: "I like her name for it best. Let us call it 'The Good Luck.'"
Mrs. March was watching for her husband and children when they came down the lane. She had been much more excited about the silver mine than she had confessed to Mr. March. All day long she had been unable to keep it out of her mind. The prospect was too tempting. "Why should it not have happened to us, as well as to so many people," she thought. "Oh! if we only could have just money enough to give Rob and Nelly a good education, I would not ask for any thing more. And, even if this is not very much of a mine, it might give us money enough for that." With such hopes and imaginations as these Mrs. March's mind had been full all day long; and, when she saw Mr. March and Rob and Nelly coming toward the house, she felt almost afraid to see them, lest she should see disappointment written on their faces.