"Ye little sorrow!" she exclaimed, wrathfully, as soon as Nelly appeared. "Where have ye been all this time, and me breaking my heart entirely with watching the baste of a cow, that has run away after all, and got took up by the police, very likely, and you hanging about the street, following your own pleasure, and leaving your poor old granny to kill herself entirely doing your work? What do you mane, you ungrateful little crater?"
"How did she run away, and you watching her all the time?" said Nelly, mischievously, for she was not at all alarmed at the explosion, knowing by experience that her grandmother's wrath was seldom enduring. "You must have gone to sleep, granny."
"Sorra a bit," replied the old woman, "but just dozing a wink with my eyes wide open. But you may just go and look for her, my fine young lady, for not a foot more can I stir to-day. So be off with ye, and waste no more time."
"I want something to eat first," said Nelly.
"Indeed and ye'll not get it, then, till I go to the grocery. How was I to get any thing, and me watching the cow all the time? Answer me that, my Lady Eleanor!"
Nelly sighed impatiently. She had intended, as soon as she got her dinner, to set to work at her tatting once more; and her mind had all the way home been full of visions of wheels and clover-leaf patterns and yokes, such as Miss Powell had showed her in the shop. And now she must let it all go, and run about half the afternoon looking for the wilful cow. There was no help for it, however; and, swallowing her vexation as well as she could, she set out in search of the missing animal. She knew her haunts tolerably well, and pursued her usual plan of visiting them one after another in regular succession; but no cow was to be found. Tired and discouraged at last, Nelly sat down on a stone by the way-side and burst into tears.
"It is always the way!" she thought. "Every thing goes against me. Just as sure as I try to do any thing, it all goes wrong. Oh, dear! I am so tired! and I don't know what in the world to do, or where to look next."
Nelly put her hand into her pocket for the rag which represented her handkerchief, and her fingers encountered the shuttle Mrs. Kirkland had given her. She took it out and looked at it.
"I have got to rest a little, anyhow, and I might as well be working," said she. Again she tried, but with, at first, no better success. She could make one scollop, but the next would not draw up.
"I will do it," said Nelly, "I don't care if it takes me a month!"