"Well, I declare, what a glance!" said a young lady who came into the room just as Nelly left it. "She looked at you as if she would like to eat you on the spot."
"Well, she had some excuse,—poor little thing!" said Mrs. Vandake, who did not feel altogether comfortable. "She wants to learn to read, and I promised to find her an old spelling-book; and this is the second time I have forgotten it. I will hunt it up to-morrow the very first thing I do."
"Poor thing!" said another lady in the parlour to her companion; "if she never learns to read till Almira remembers to find her a book, she will die in ignorance."
Poor Nelly walked homewards with her empty pails, her lips quivering, and her eyes constantly filling with indignant tears, in spite of her best endeavours to wink them away.
"I'll never take a book from her,—not if I never have one!" she thought. "She did promise twice over to give me a spelling-book, and of her own accord. I never asked her. And then to call me a beggar! I'll tell granny; see if I don't! I never begged of her, and I never will. But I won't give it up. I will have a book some way or other."
This resolution brought Nelly to the house where Kitty Brown lived. Kitty was at work in the garden, helping her mistress to plant out a border of blue violets.
"Oh, here is Nelly—punctual Nelly—with her milk," said Mrs. Powers, looking up. "Go in with Nelly, Kitty, and put it away."
"What does 'punctual' mean, Kitty?" asked Nelly, as she stood waiting for her pail.
"Why, it means doing a thing at the right time and when you say you will," answered Kitty. "Mrs. Powers calls you punctual because she says you always come when you promise. You don't say you will, and then disappoint her. I heard her say, the other day, that it was a good thing about you."
"Well, I mean to be," said Nelly. "I know it provokes me when people promise to do things for me, and then forget. It makes me just hopping." And she went on to tell her friend all about the spelling-book, concluding with,—