"You're all to come to our house this afternoon, you know," said Maggie, "and then you can see them; and bring Daisy too, Nellie: we want her."
After a little more talk and play, the children separated, Nellie going home with her sisters, and promising to come over to Mrs. Bradford's house as early in the afternoon as possible.
"What makes you go home so soon?" asked Carrie, supposing that it was those "horrid lessons" which took Nellie away.
"I thought mamma might have something else she wanted me to do," said Nellie, "and we have been down on the beach a good while."
"What makes you do the housekeeping," asked Carrie,—"just to help mamma, or because you like to?"
"Mamma asked me to do it to help her," said Nellie, without a thought of her mother's real object in proposing the plan, "but I do like to do it, it is real fun."
"I'd like to do something to help mamma," said Carrie.
"Me too," put in Daisy.
"I think you both could do something to help her, if you chose," said Nellie, with a little hesitation; for she was a modest, rather shy child, who never thought it her place to correct or give advice even to her own brothers and sisters.
"How can I?" asked Carrie, and,—