"I can't," said Nelly; "granny will want me."
"Well, then, take the shuttle home with you and try there," said Mrs. Kirkland. "If you learn to do it right, I will give you a ball of thread to make some for yourself. You can come in the next time you come down town, and show Miss Powell or me what you have done."
"What an odd child!" she added, after Nelly had gone. "I should think there was the making of a woman in her. Do you know any thing about her, Miss Powell?"
"Only that she lives in a little tumble-down cottage on the upper part of College Street, opposite the common. I found her crying yesterday, and comforted her as well as I could. I wonder if she will succeed with her tatting?"
"I rather think she will," said Mrs. Kirkland.
[CHAPTER III.]
NELLY hurried homewards, with her mind curiously agitated. She could not tell whether she were more pleased at finding and renewing her acquaintance with Miss Powell, or mortified at her want of success in learning the work her friends had so kindly tried to teach her.
"But I won't give up!" said Nelly, passionately, to herself. "I'll never give up till I learn, if I work at it all the rest of my life. It looks so easy when she does it! Anyhow, I am glad I have got the shuttle; and it was real good of that lady to give it to me. Wouldn't it be nice, though, to have such a shop as that, all full of pretty things, and nice ladies coming to buy them? But I don't see how I am ever to be good for any thing unless I can manage to go to school. Oh, dear! I wish I could see my way out somehow!"
Many people besides Nelly have wished the same thing when in difficulties. Those are happy who, when they cannot, as the saying is, see an inch before them, are able to trust the love and care of their heavenly Father and to wait with patience for him to make their path plain. But this was a lesson Nelly had not yet learned.
When she reached home, the welcome she received was not calculated to soothe her troubled spirit. It is but doing Granny Ryan justice to say that she was usually very good-natured. But she had been watching the cow ever since Nelly went away, and had fallen asleep upon her post, and the faithless animal, taking a base advantage of her owner's drowsiness, had wandered off to parts unknown. It was a serious misfortune; for there was great danger that the cow would be taken up and put into the pound, in which case it would cost Mrs. Ryan a long walk and a dollar to get her out. It is, therefore, no great wonder that granny's temper was somewhat disturbed.