Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 13

There was a glowing wood stove in the room and a big, chintz-covered box beside it, full of "chunks." It was warm in the room, the atmosphere being permeated with the sweet tang of wood smoke.

Nan dried her eyes. There really was not any use in crying. Momsey and Papa Sherwood could not know how bad she felt, and she really was not selfish enough to wish them to know.

"Now, Nanny Sherwood!" she scolded herself, "there's not a particle of use of your sniveling. It won't 'get you anywhere,' as Mrs. Joyce says.

You'll only make your eyes red, and the folks will see that you're not happy here, and they will be hurt.

"Mustn't make other folks feel bad just because I feel bad myself," Nan decided. "Come on! Pluck up your courage!

"I know what I'll do," she added, literally shaking herself as she jumped off the trunk. "I'll unpack. I'll cover up everything ugly that I can with something pretty from Tillbury."

Hurried as she had been her departure from the cottage on Amity Street, Nan had packed in her trunk many of those little possessions, dear to her childish heart, that had graced her bedroom. These appeared from the trunk even before she hung away her clothes in the unplastered closet where the cold wind searched through the cracks from out-of-doors. Into that closet, away back in the corner, went a long pasteboard box, tied carefully with strong cord. Nan patted it gently with her hand before she left the box, whispering:

"You dear! I wouldn't have left you behind for anything! I won't let them know you are here; but sometimes, when I'm sure n.o.body will interrupt, you shall come out."

She spread a fringed towel over the barren top of the dresser. It would not cover it all, of course; but it made an island in a sea of emptiness.

And on the island she quickly set forth the plain little toilet-set her mother had given her on her last birthday, the manicure set that was a present from Papa Sherwood, and the several other knickknacks that would help to make the big dresser look as though "there was somebody at home," as she whispered to herself.

She draped a scarf here, hung up a pretty silk bag there, placed Momsey's and Papa Sherwood's portraits in their little silver filigree easels on the mantelpiece, flanking the clock that would not run and which was held by the ugly china shepherdess with only one foot and a broken crook, the latter ornament evidently having been at one time prized by the babies of her aunt's family, for the ring at the top was dented by little teeth.

Nothing, however, could take the curse of ugliness off the staring gray walls of the room, or from the horrible turkey-red and white canton-flannel quilt that bedecked the bed. Nan longed to spill the contents of her ink bottle over that hideous coverlet, but did not dare.

The effort to make the big east room look less like a barn made Nan feel better in her mind. It was still dreary, it must be confessed. There were a dozen things she wished she could do to improve it. There were nothing but paper shades at the windows. Even a simple scrim curtain-----

And, in thinking of this, Nan raised her eyes to one window to see a face pressed close against the gla.s.s, and two rolling, crablike eyes glaring in at her.

"Mercy!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Nan Sherwood. "What is the matter with that child's eyes? They'll drop out of her head!"

She ran to the window, evidently startling the peeper quite as much as she had been startled herself. The girl, who was about Nan's own age, fell back from the pane, stumbled in the big, men's boots she wore, and ungracefully sprawled in the snow upon her back. She could not get away before Nan had the window open.

The sash was held up by a notched stick. Nan put her head and shoulders out into the frosty air and stared down at the prostrate girl, who stared up at her in return.

"What do you want?" Nan asked.

"Nothin'," replied the stranger.

"What were you peeping in for?"

"To see you," was the more frank reply.

"What for?" asked Nan.

"Ain't you the new gal?"

"I've newly come here, yes," admitted Nan.

"Well!"

"But I'm not such a sight, am I?" laughed the girl from Tillbury. "But you are, lying there in the snow. You'll get your death of cold. Get up."

The other did so. Beside the men's boots, which were patched and old, she wore a woollen skirt, a blouse, and a shawl over her head and shoulders. She shook the snow from her garments much as a dog frees himself from water after coming out of a pond.

"It's too cold to talk with this window open. You're a neighbor, aren't you?"

The girl nodded.

"Then come in," urged Nan. "I'm sure my aunt will let you."

The girl shook her head in a decided negative to this proposal. "Don't want Marm Sherwood to see me," she said.

"Why not?"

"She told me not to come over after you come 'ithout I put on my new dress and washed my hands and face."

"Well!" exclaimed Nan, looking at her more closely. "You seem to have a clean face, at least."

"Yes. But that dress she 'gin me, my brother Bob took and put on Old Beagle for to dress him up funny. And Beagle heard a noise he thought was a fox barking and he started for the tamarack swamp, lickety-split.

I expect there ain't enough of that gingham left to tie around a sore thumb."

Nan listened to this in both amus.e.m.e.nt and surprise. The girl was a new specimen to her.

"Come in, anyway," she urged. "I can't keep the window open."

"I'll climb in, then," declared the other suddenly, and, suiting the action to the word, she swarmed over the sill; but she left one huge boot in the snow, and Nan, laughing delightedly, ran for the poker to fish for it, and drew it in and shut down the window.

The strange girl was warming her hands at the fire. Nan pushed a chair toward her and took one herself, but not the complaining spring rocking chair.

"Now tell me all about yourself," the girl demanded.

"I'm Nan Sherwood, and I've come here to Pine Camp to stay while my father and mother have gone to Scotland."

"I've heard about Scotland," declared the girl with the very prominent eyes.

"Have you?"

"Yes. Gran'ther Llewellen sings that song. You know:

"'Scotland's burning! Scotland's burning! Where, where? Where, where?

Fire! Fire! Fire! Fire! Pour on water! Pour on water! Fire's out! Fire's out!'"

Nan laughed. "I've heard that, too," she said. "But it was another Scotland." Then: "So your name is Llewellen?"

"Marg'ret Llewellen."

"I've heard your grandfather is sick," said Nan, remembering Tom's report of the health of the community when he had met her and her uncle at Hobart Forks.

"Yes. He's got the tic-del-rew," declared Margaret, rather unfeelingly.

"Aunt Matildy says he's allus creakin' round like a rusty gate-hinge."