"There now, Miss Nellie, I think you can get along without me for a bit," said Catherine, at last. "I have my bread to see to, and you could be overhauling all these boxes and pots the while, and setting by what you're sure Mrs. Ransom will want emptied. If ever I see sech an untidy set as must have had this house afore us, and a shame to them it is to be laving things this way, and they calling themselves ladies and gentlemen."
And, with her arms full of "rubbish," away walked the good-natured Irishwoman, whose tidy soul was, as she had said, sorely vexed by the slovenly way in which the house had been left by those who had lived in it before Mrs. Ransom's family.
"Here, Daisy," said Nellie, who thought it necessary to find incessant occupation for the busy little fingers of her smallest "helper" lest they should find it for themselves,—"here, Daisy dear, you may sort those corks. Pick out all the large ones and put them in this jar, and put the small ones in this. That will be a great help."
"I'd rafer help fissing sugar," said Daisy, raising herself on tiptoe with one hand on the edge of the sugar-barrel, and peeping longingly within its depths.
"Yes, I dare say you would," laughed Nellie, "but then the sugar is to stay where it is. But I'll tell you, Daisy. Run and ask mamma if I may give you the largest lump of sugar I can find when the corks are done."
Away scampered Daisy, and did not return for some minutes, her attention being attracted on the way with something else than her errand, for one thing at a time was not Daisy's motto.
Having at once eased her own mind on the subject of the sugar by receiving mamma's permission to have "the largest lump that Nellie could find," she thought that both sugar and corks would keep till it suited her convenience to return to the store-room, and, seeing a large parcel lying upon the hall-table, she was seized with a thirst for information respecting its contents. She walked round and round it, inspecting it on every side; then ran back to her mother.
"Mamma," she said, "there's oh! such a big bundle on the hall-table."
"Yes, I know it," said mamma.
"And with writing on it," said Daisy. "I fink the writing says, Miss Daisy Ransom, with somebody's respects."