“And so am I,” cried Nelly; “if ever there was good luck, that is.”
“I am not so sure about that,” said Melinda, with a sage, grown-up air; for she liked to seem like a woman, and often told her companions, “dear knows, if she wasn’t big enough to be thought one, she would like to know who was!”
"Why, isn’t Mr. Sidney a nice young man, Melindy?" asked Nelly, in bewilderment.
“Hush!” said Melinda, drawing her into a corner; “don’t talk so loud. You see, he’s come home as poor as he went, and folks are afraid that he will go on just as he did before,—that is, spend all his own earnings and plenty of his mother’s, too.”
“Dear, dear!” said Nelly; “that will be hard for Miss Milly.”
“Anyway,” continued Melinda, wisely, “we can hope for the best, you know. Miss Milly is so glad to have him back, that she came into this ’ere school-room, this very morning, and told the scholars she was going to take them all on a picnic, to-morrow, up yonder, on Mr. Bradish’s mountain. We are to ask our mothers if we can go, and then come here with our dinners in our baskets, and set off together as soon as the grass dries. Fun, isn’t it?”
Nelly’s eyes danced.
“A picnic! well, if that isn’t nice! I hope Comfort will put something real good in my basket, to-morrow.” Then she added, thoughtfully, “I wonder if Martin might not go, too?”
"I’ll ask," said Melinda; and up she went to Miss Milly, who at that moment entered.
Little Johnny Bixby, a boy of ten, now came up to wish Nell good-morning, and talk about the picnic. Nelly gave him her poetry, and he read it, and said,