"Of course! I declare I don't know what you are up to exactly; but if you won't tell me, I'll find out for myself pretty quick that's one thing."
She flung open the door and ran up; and Ellen heard her feet trampling overhead from one end of the house to the other; and sounds, too, of pushing and pulling things over the floor; it was plain Nancy was rummaging.
"Well," said Ellen, as she turned uneasily upon her bed, "it's no affair of mine; I can't help it, whatever she does. But oh! wont Aunt Fortune be angry!"
Nancy presently came down with her frock gathered up into a bag before her.
"What do you think I have got here?" said she, "I s'pose you didn't know there was a basket of fine hickory-nuts up there in the corner? Was it you or Miss Fortune that hid them away so nicely? I s'pose she thought nobody would ever think of looking behind that great blue chest and under the feather- bed, but it takes me! Miss Fortune was afraid of your stealing 'em, I guess, Ellen?"
"She needn't have been," said Ellen, indignantly.
"No, I s'pose you wouldn't take 'em if you saw 'em; you wouldn't eat 'em if they were cracked for you, would you?"
She flung some on Ellen's bed as she spoke. Nancy had seated herself on the floor, and using for a hammer a piece of old iron she had brought down with her from the garret, she was cracking the nuts on the clean white hearth.
"Indeed I wouldn't!" said Ellen, throwing them back; "and you oughtn't to crack them there, Nancy you'll make a dreadful mess."
"What, do you think I care?" said the other, scornfully. She leisurely cracked and ate as many as she pleased of the nuts, bestowing the rest in the bosom of her frock. Ellen watched fearfully for her next move. If she should open the little door and get among her books and boxes!