These girls were going to market; Susan, with a cage full of young pigeons on her head, and Mollie carrying a basket of fresh eggs.
Susan was a merry, teasing girl, and she began to advise Nannie to take the lamb to market, and sell him.
"Seeing that he is so fat and clean, he will be sure to fetch a good price," she said.
Nannie was shocked at this, and throwing her arms about her pet, she cried—
"I wouldn't sell my darling Snowdrop to a naughty, cruel butcher, for all the world! I'll never, never let him be killed!"
While the girls were talking, young Robert Grey, the farmer's son, rode up on his pretty black horse, and stopped too; it may be because of Susan Smith—for the two were famous friends. He heard Nannie's reply about the lamb, and looking down kindly upon her, said—
"If you are ever obliged to part with your pretty pet, my little girl, you need not sell him to the butcher, but bring him up to the farm-house, and I will buy him, and he shall not be killed."
Nannie thanked him very prettily, and he rode away with the merry market girls.
A few days after this, little Ollie was taken down with a fever, and was very ill for several weeks. At last, she began to get well very slowly; and then came the hardest time for her mother and sister—for she was fretful, dainty, and babyish, and cried a great deal for luxuries which her poor parents were not able to purchase for her. One afternoon, she cried incessantly for some strawberries, for she had heard they were in market. Strawberries are very dear in England, and Mrs. Tompkins could not buy them, for she had spent all her little stock of money for medicines; and now she felt so sad for the child that she could not help crying herself. When Nannie saw this, she put on her bonnet, and, calling Snowdrop, slipped away over the fields to the farm-house. When she came back, she was alone, but she put several bright shillings into her mother's hand, and choking down her sobs, said—