"Making a great many things," said Nelly. "I am in Mrs. Kirkland's store," she added, feeling two inches taller. "I stay there all the time now."
"I am glad to find you doing so well. But come, look at my picture and see how you like it."
Mr. Lambert made way for Nelly, with very little ceremony, among the crowd of gazers, and placed her in front of the picture. Nelly uttered a cry of delight. There was Crummie, "as natural as life," cropping the grass; and surely that was no other than Nelly,—that little girl with the short black curls and the ragged red petticoat, working at her tatting, under the chestnut-tree.
"Well, what do you say?" asked Mr. Lambert. "Does it look like you?"
"It looks like Crummie," said Nelly; "but I did not think I was as pretty as that," she added, ingenuously.
"Then you never looked in the glass," said a gentleman standing by. "Who is she, Lambert, and where does she live?"
"She is my little friend, Mr. Rowe, and she lives under very sufficient protection," said Mr. Lambert, gravely, and with a look and tone that Nelly did not understand. The gentleman laughed and turned away.
"So you like the picture, Nelly?" said Mr. Lambert, after she had looked a while longer and was proceeding on her errand.
"Yes, very much," answered Nelly; "but I don't like that gentleman speaking to me so," she added, with an angry flash of her eye. "I think he was real impudent."
"And so he was. Don't have any thing to say to him, Nelly, in case he ever speaks to you."