"Sure the lady knows we are poor folks," said Mrs. Ryan, good-naturedly laying down her pipe to assist Nelly in her search for the comb. It was finally discovered behind an old band-box on the shelf; but Nelly found the use of it no easy matter. Her curly hair was matted into a hundred knots; and the more she wetted it, the more it twisted and curled into rings, as if it had been alive.
"Granny, I wish you'd cut my hair short, like Kitty Brown's," said Nelly, finally. "I can't never get the tangles out."
Mrs. Ryan wondered more and more what had suddenly taken possession of her grand-daughter; but she was fond of the child, and willing to gratify her where it was not too much trouble; so she hunted up her scissors and clipped Nelly's black rings close to her head, and proceeded farther to part them evenly upon the top, so that they curled round her face in a way that many a modern young lady might have envied.
"Look at yourself in the glass, and see how nice you look," said Mrs. Ryan, as she finished her operation. "There's not a lady in the land any prettier, if you were only dressed up."
"And why can't I be dressed up?" asked Nelly. "Why can't I have things like the Jenkins girls and Kitty Brown?"
"Because we're poor folks, child. Don't I tell you so every day? Just you wait till the money comes from Ireland I told you of, and then see the silks and satins I'll buy you, and the gold watches and diamond rings you'll have!"
"I don't want diamond rings and gold watches; and a pretty figure I'd make dressed up in silks and satins, and me not knowing how to read," said Nelly, pettishly. "I want to be decent now; and I don't believe the money ever will come from Ireland. I don't believe there is any money there."
"Then it is a wicked, ungrateful child you are, not to believe your own granny," said Mrs. Ryan, much displeased by this profession of unbelief on Nelly's part. "Haven't I told you over and over how my father was second cousin to the Earl of Glengall, that was descended from the old Butler that was king in Ireland long ago? And didn't I tell you about his visiting my lord, and the racehorses he kept, and the servants he had? And don't it stand to reason, when the old lord died without children—"
"I don't want to hear about it," interrupted Nelly. "I'm tired of it. If my great-grandfather was cousin to all the lords in Ireland, it won't ever do us any good." So saying, Nelly flung out of the house and resumed her old position of leaning over the gate.
There had been a time when Nelly took great delight in these golden visions of her grandmother's, and could spend hours in listening to Mrs. Ryan's tales of the grandeur of her father's family, and in dreaming over them in her own mind. To the old woman herself they were meat and drink, clothing and fire-wood. She had arranged all in her own mind a hundred times,—how a letter was to come from foreign parts, telling her the news that she had succeeded to the estates of her father's cousin,—how a grand gentleman, with a splendid carriage and footmen in livery, such as she had often seen in her childhood, should drive up to the door and take in herself and Nelly, while all the neighbours stood staring,—how he would buy them all manner of fine things, and she should be a countess no less, and Nelly would be called Lady Eleanor. All this she had gone over in her own mind, and talked over with Nelly a thousand times, almost always concluding with,—