CHAPTER III.
NETTIE'S GARRET.
"I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me."—Psalm xxiii. 4.
ettie's attic grew to be a very pleasant place to her. She never heard the least sound of rats; and it was so nicely out of the way. Barry never came up there, and there she could not even hear the voices of her father and Mr. Lumber. She had a tired time of it down stairs.
The first afternoon was a good specimen of the way things went on. Nettie's mornings were always spent at school; Mrs. Mathieson would have that, as she said, whether she could get on without Nettie or no. From the time Nettie got home till she went to bed she was as busy as she could be. There was so much bread to make and so much beef and pork to boil, and so much washing of pots and kettles; and at meal-times there was often cakes to fry, besides all the other preparations. Mr. Mathieson seemed to have made up his mind that his lodger's rent should all go to the table and be eaten up immediately; but the difficulty was to make as much as he expected of it in that line; for now he brought none of his own earnings home, and Mrs. Mathieson had more than a sad guess where they went. By degrees he came to be very little at home in the evenings, and he carried off Barry with him. Nettie saw her mother burdened with a great outward and inward care at once, and stood in the breach all she could. She worked to the extent of her strength, and beyond it, in the endless getting and clearing away of meals; and watching every chance, when the men were out of the way, she would coax her mother to sit down and read a chapter in her Testament.
"It will rest you so, mother," Nettie would say; "and I will make the bread just as soon as I get the dishes done. Do let me! I like to do it."
Sometimes Mrs. Mathieson could not be persuaded; sometimes she would yield, in a despondent kind of way, and sit down with the Testament, and look at it as if neither there nor anywhere else in the universe could she find rest or comfort any more.
"It don't signify, child," said she, one afternoon when Nettie had been urging her to sit down and read. "I haven't the heart to do anything. We're all driving to rack and ruin just as fast as we can go."
"Oh no, mother," said Nettie, "I don't think we are."
"I am sure of it. I see it coming every day. Every day it is a little worse; and Barry is going along with your father; and they are destroying me among them, body and soul too."