In six months little Nancy had become so useful that she was formally bound out to the old lady, and now she went to school in summer half a day, and had learned to read and write tolerably. She was very lonesome in that solitary house. There were children at the poor-house whom she played with, tended, and loved, but Miss Roxy had not even a cat; and when Nancy, in the longing of her loving little heart, took a crook-necked squash out of the shed, tied a calico rag about its neck, and made a dolly of it to be company for her in the little garret where she slept, Miss Roxy hunted it up—for she kept count of everything she had—boxed Nancy's ears soundly, and cut up poor little yellow Mary Ann, and boiled her in a pot for pies.
Until the mitten business began, Miss Roxy found it hard to find enough work for the child's active fingers to do; but after that she had no trouble in keeping the little girl busy, as poor Nancy found out to her sorrow. The evenings of spring, when she used to love to sit on the door-step with her apron over her head, and listen to the frogs peeping in a swamp far below, were now spent in winding hanks of yarn, or struggling, with stiff little fingers, to slip the loops off one needle and on to another, her eyes tired with the dull light of a tallow candle, and her head aching with the effort to learn and the slaps her dullness earned from Miss Roxy's hard hands. It was worse as summer came on, and she had to knit, knit, all the time, with not a minute to get new posies for her garden. Only by early dawn did she get her chance to watch the blue liverwort open its sunny cup; the white eggs of bloodroot buds come suddenly out of the black ground; the tiny rows of small flowers that children call "Dutchman's breeches" hang and flutter on their red stems; the azure sand-violet, dancing columbine, purple crane's-bill, lilac orchis, and queer moccasin flower make that hidden corner gay and sweet.
Even when school began, she had to work still. Miss Roxy was determined to send a big box of double-knit mittens to John Jackson before winter set in; and as fast as they were finished they were dampened, pressed, and laid away in the old hair trunk in the garret where Nancy slept.
Poor little girl! she hated the sight of mittens, and this summer a wild wish came into her head, that grew and grew, as she sat alone at her knitting, until it quite filled head and heart too.
A child from the city, spending the summer near Bassett, came now and then to school as a sort of pastime, and brought with her a doll that really went to sleep when you laid it down: shut its bright blue eyes, and never opened them until it was taken up!
It seemed to lonely little Nancy that such a doll would be all anybody could want in the world. If only Nancy had such a dear lovely creature to sleep in her bed at night, and sit up in the door beside her while she knit, she knew she would be perfectly happy; but that could never be. However, after much dreaming, wishing, and planning, one day a bright and desperate idea came across her. That night she asked a great many questions of Miss Roxy, who at last gave her a sharp answer, and told her to hold her tongue; but the child had found out all she wanted to know and did not mind the crossness.
Next morning she got up very early, and stealing across the garret, took an old book from a dusty pile on a shelf, then with a pair of scissors she had brought up overnight she cut out a blank leaf, and pinned it, carefully folded, into the pocket of her dress.
She did not go out-of-doors at the school recess, but took the pen with which she had been writing her copy, and smoothing the paper out, wrote this queer little letter:
"Deer gentilman,—I am a poor little gurl who nits mittins for Miss Roxy. I am bound out and I havent got no folks of my own, not so much as a verry smal baby. I wish I had a dol. I am real lonesum. wil you send mee a dol. My naim is Nansy Peck, and I live to Mis Roxy Blair's house in Baset Vermonte. I nit this mittin. when I am big I wil pay for the dol.
"Nansy Peck."