CHAPTER XIV

Promoted

APRIL was in. There were sheets of flowers—mauve, yellow, pink, and purple—in the open spaces of the forest ground at Bratley. The streams were swollen and muddy from the melting snows on the higher hills, while the sun shone more warmly and the day grew longer.

Nell, child of nature that she was, grew entranced with the beauty and promise all about her, and but for the duty which chained her fast to the little office at the depot for twelve hours out of every twenty-four, she would have been out-of-doors the whole day long.

Her office was a perfect bower of beauty in these spring days, for so many people brought her flowers and other offerings of a similar nature, in return for kindly offices of one sort and another which she had at different times performed.

Having no exalted notions regarding her own dignity, she was always ready to help other people without fear of lowering herself thereby.

When Mrs. Nichols fell ill with a bad cold early in March, Nell got up at five o’clock in the morning and did the week’s wash before going to her office. More than once, too, she trimmed the lamps at the depot, when the baggage-clerk, whose duty it was, smashed his thumb. Many, also, were the bits of needlework, stocking-darning, patching, and so forth, which she performed during office hours for over-taxed mothers of families.

Now she was reaping the reward of her small services; and to her, lonely as she had been, it was inexpressibly sweet to earn the loving-kindness of those about her. Having no people of her own, she was fain to adopt everyone in any sort of need who crossed her path; and she was by far the most popular person in Bratley during that sweet springtime.

There were two drops of bitterness in her cup, however. The first was the fear lest her grandfather should find her out, or be himself found out and sent to prison on account of some of that old-time law-breaking of which he had been guilty; the other drawback to her happiness lay in the fact that Gertrude was to come back at the middle of the month to take up her work again, and then she, Nell, must find some other occupation.

As yet she had made no plans for the future, except to arrange with Mrs. Nichols that she would stay there for a week or two after her deputy work was done, while looking round for work of her own.

Meanwhile the days were as full of work as it was possible to crowd them, and every night Nell went to bed so tired that she fell asleep directly her head touched the pillow. There was her own office work, which had grown more exacting now that spring had opened sources of employment which had been closed during winter; then she had sewing to do for herself and her neighbours; while every spare minute was filled in with efforts to increase her scanty store of book-learning.

The sewing was a harder task than it would have been to a girl who had led a less toilsome life. Nell’s hands and arms, roughened and strengthened by much wood-sawing and chopping, digging, and similar tasks, felt the awkwardness of what our great-grandmothers called sewing white seam.

But sewing is a distinctly feminine accomplishment; and as Nell yearned to excel in all womanly occupations, she persevered with needles and cotton until she became an adept at the gentle art.

As the time drew on for Gertrude’s arrival, she found herself looking forward to it with an eager delight, which pushed her personal pain of losing her employment quite into the background. Some work would be sure to turn up for herself sooner or later. Meanwhile she would have the pleasure of seeing Gertrude, and hearing news of the children.

Just a week before the day when Gertrude was to come, Nell got a letter which set her pulses fluttering, and made her dance about her office in sheer joyfulness of heart.

The letter was from headquarters, and offered her the post of telegraph-operator at Camp’s Gulch, at a salary equal to what Gertrude received at Bratley.

She longed to rush over to Mrs. Nichols with the good news, only she could not leave her office. So she hurried off to find her good friend the baggage-clerk, and ask him to go to Mrs. Nichols as soon as he could spare five minutes and say how badly she wanted speech with her.

“No bad news, I hope?” he said, with clumsy kindness; for her face had grown white and strained with the intensity of her hidden emotion.

“It is good news—for me. I will tell you presently, only I want Mrs. Nichols to know first,” she said, turning abruptly away, and walking off to her office again, feeling horribly afraid that she would break down and cry like a baby before his face.

“She’s a queer girl in some things. I’m blessed if ever I saw anyone take good news like that before,” he muttered, as he watched her hasty retreat.

Then, because he was decidedly curious on the subject of Nell’s news, he went over at once to the house where Mrs. Nichols lived, and startled that worthy woman rather considerably by the manner in which he delivered his message.

“Miss Hamblyn wants you to step over to the depot as spry as you can, for she’s got some news she wants to tell you—good news, she calls it; but to me she looks as if she’d had a smartish blow of some sort.”

“Gracious me, Sam Peters! Why couldn’t you have come before I’d got my hands messing into this bread? Or else why couldn’t you have stopped until I was through with it, and had set it to rise?” exclaimed Mrs. Nichols, in great exasperation; for she, being a true daughter of Eve, was intensely anxious to know what Nell’s news was.

“Well, ma’am, not being blessed with what folks call second sight, I don’t see how I could be supposed to know when you were going to be busy with a batch of bread. But you’d better come along as quick as you can, for Miss Hamblyn was as white as a sheet when she spoke to me, and she went off back to her office with her lips a-quiver like a child that’s just in for a good cry; and I ought to know, seeing that I have got seven of them.” Having delivered himself of this statement, Sam Peters walked away with his head in the air, leaving Mrs. Nichols in a condition bordering on distraction.

“Did any one ever see such a man? And whatever can Nell have heard that she should call good news, and yet want to cry over? I hope that old man Doss Umpey hasn’t been finding out where she is, and trying to get her to go back and live with him. Or perhaps she has heard of a situation a hundred miles away, and feels bad at going so far from Bratley.”

Mrs. Nichols’s bread had but scanty consideration that morning. It was certainly poked, prodded, thumped, kneaded, and all the rest of it; but everything was done in such an absent-minded fashion that it was not wonderful, it was a trifle sad and lumpy, turning out vastly inferior to the usual excellence of her productions in that line.

As soon as it could be left to rise at its leisure before the fire, Mrs. Nichols flung her big grey shawl round her, slipped a pair of rubbers over her worn house-shoes, and set off for the depot.

But when she arrived, very much out of breath, and panting from the haste she had made, Nell was busy at the sounder, and held up her hand in token that she must not be interrupted.

For a whole twenty minutes after that, Mrs. Nichols sat wheezing and puffing on the chair in the corner, while Nell listened to communications being ticked out from Lytton, and sent back replies to questions which were being asked.

At last, just when the stout woman’s patience was exhausted, and she was on the point of getting up and going back to her bread, the irritating clicking of the sounder ceased, and she had the satisfaction of seeing Nell turn round ready to talk and be talked to.

“I meant you should know first; that was why I sent for you, for I should have had hard work to keep a secret like this the whole day through. I have been offered the post at Camp’s Gulch, and so I shall be only fifteen miles away.”

“Now, that is what I call real good news!” exclaimed Mrs. Nichols, briskly. “And I will just give Sam Peters a piece of my mind for coming along and frightening me in the fashion he did,” she added resentfully.

“But I told him it was good news,” said Nell, whose colour had come back by this time.

“So he said; but he also informed me that you went white in the face, and that your lips were quivering as if you were going to cry. He even had the impudence to tell me that he ought to know how people looked when they were going to cry, because he’d got seven children.”

Nell laughed merrily. “Judging from the frequency with which his children do cry, I really think that he ought to know. I’m afraid, too, that I did feel rather like tears, for it was such a wonderful thing to me that my need should be met like this, and that I should not have to be one day out of employment,” she added, in a graver tone.

Mrs. Nichols sniffed dubiously. “I would have been glad enough to have you for a few weeks, or even a few months, come to that. And perhaps by waiting you might have found something better. Camp’s Gulch is a dreadful rough place, and I should think you would be nearly the only woman there.”

“Not quite so bad as that, I hope,” said Nell, drawing a rather wry face. “But don’t you see that my especial delight in the matter is because I shall be only fifteen miles from Bratley, and sometimes I can come over and spend Sundays with you and Gertrude?”

“There is that to be considered, certainly,” admitted Mrs. Nichols, tacitly consenting to be mollified. “Only, so far as roughness goes, you would have been better off at Roseneath, or any of the little places this side of Lytton.”

“Never mind; I have had to get used to a lot of roughness in my time, so perhaps I shall not feel it as a better brought-up girl might have done,” Nell said hopefully. And in her heart she determined to make the best of it, however rough and disagreeable the place might be.

“Your life may have been rough of late, but I guess you’ve been as well reared as most girls. Parson Hamblyn’s daughter would know as much as most what true refinement is, I fancy,” the stout woman said, with a toss of her head.

But Nell was not going to be drawn into any sort of argument on that score, for she had already had to find by experience that she was no match for Mrs. Nichols, who could talk her down in a very short time, so she only said quietly—

“It will be very nice to feel that I have got a permanent post, and work that is really my own to do at last, for I am getting a little tired of being moved on so often.”

“Poor child! I only wish it was a nicer place than Camp’s Gulch at which you were going to settle down. However, we can only hope it will be for the best; and now I must go back to that bread, for what it will be like is more than I can imagine,” said Mrs. Nichols, rising in a great hurry, as she suddenly remembered the lump of dough which was warming in the pan before the fire, ready and waiting to be baked.

After that the days were fuller than ever. Nell scrubbed out her office until it was clean as hands could make it, and the men about the depot declared themselves afraid to set foot inside the door. Then she polished everything which could by any amount of rubbing be induced to shine, and when everything was done which love could suggest or ingenuity devise, she sat down to wait with what patience she might the day and hour of Gertrude’s arrival.

Mrs. Nichols had also been having a grand upheaval in preparation for the coming of Gertrude. Nell’s little wooden-walled bedroom had been turned out and scrubbed, while Nell herself was occupying the draughty old loft, until the day of her departure for Camp’s Gulch.

It was not a comfortable sleeping-apartment, certainly, but it was far better than the room in which she had had to sleep at Blue Bird Ridge, and, never having been brought up to luxury, she thought less of discomforts than many other girls might have done.

The condition of her wardrobe troubled Nell rather at this juncture. Ever since coming to Bratley she had hoarded the remnant of salary left over after board and lodging were paid for, and from this small surplus had paid Mrs. Lorimer for the brown coat and cap which had stood her in such good stead all the winter. Gertrude had cried out hotly against taking the money, declaring that the cost of the coat had been earned three times over during the weeks when Nell toiled for them all at Lorimer’s Clearing; but Mrs. Lorimer had decided to keep it, and so there was nothing more to be said.

Now the days were getting brighter, and the merciless spring sunshine would show up the shabbiness of the old blue merino, which had to serve for Sundays and weekdays alike. Nell just yearned for a new frock, but the difficulty was how to get it. If she had been expert at her needle, as some girls were, she might have bought a few yards of cloth and put a frock together for herself; but, although she could manage to sew a straight seam, and set on a patch with a fair degree of neatness, and might even have done the sewing of a frock, if it had been put ready for her, the cutting-out and fixing were quite beyond her capabilities.

There were, of course, the thirty dollars belonging to the stranger, which she had found under the settle at the Lone House; but Nell would have gone about in actual rags, rather than have touched this sum, which she was always hoping to be able to return to the rightful owner.

On the evening of the day before Gertrude’s arrival, the baggage-clerk came up to Nell as she was leaving her office. He had a long, thin dress-box in his hand, and looked rather more sheepish and dejected than usual.

“There’s this box come for you on the night cars from Lytton, Miss Hamblyn, and I would have taken it over to Mrs. Nichols’s place for you, but I’m just loaded down like a pack-donkey to-night,” he explained, in a tone of deprecating apology.

“For me? But I don’t expect any parcel. There must be a mistake, surely!” exclaimed Nell, in great astonishment.

“‘Miss Eleanor Hamblyn, care of Mrs. Nichols, Bratley,’” read the baggage-clerk. “It don’t look much like a mistake, seeing that there ain’t two of you. Will you carry it along with you, or shall I bring it over first thing in the morning?”

“I will carry it, of course. How much sleep do you suppose that I should get to-night, with the thought of a mysterious unopened parcel on my mind? Then the depot might get burned down in the night, or robbed—in fact, anything might happen.” And she laughed as she took the parcel, though she was trembling with nervous expectation.

“So it might, miss,” replied Peters, in a tone of solemn dejection. And he touched his cap as he turned away; but a careful observer would have detected a cheerful grin, which, beginning at his mouth, widened until it covered his whole countenance, like the ripples which cover a pond when a stone is thrown in.

Nell, being occupied with her parcel, did not see the smile, and would not have understood it if she had. As it was, she went off at a run, and burst in upon Mrs. Nichols like a whirlwind in miniature.

“Just look, a parcel has come for me by rail! Where can it be from, do you think?” she cried.

“Best open it and see,” suggested the stout woman, whose face, as she turned her head away, reflected the same smile as the baggage-clerk’s had displayed.

In agitated silence Nell wrestled with the knots. The quicker way would have been to cut the string; but where rigid economy had to be studied, cutting string was regarded as wilful, wicked waste, so the knots had to come undone.

When the box was unfastened, the lifted lid showed white tissue paper; when that also had been lifted, there was revealed a coat and skirt of dark grey cloth, and two blouses, one white, the other with little red spots on a white ground.

For a minute or two Nell stood speechless, staring into the box, and in the background Mrs. Nichols stood silent also, only now there was a half-anxious look on her face, as if she feared how Nell was going to take this love-prompted offering, which might, however, prove so hurting to her sensitive pride as to seem almost like an insult.

But Mrs. Nichols need not have been afraid. Nell turned presently, her face white to the lips, and her eyes shining like two stars.

“Who did it? You?” she asked, jerking out the words in an unsteady fashion.

“Only a part, everybody did something; even Sam Peters’ wife managed a dollar, because she said she didn’t know how she would have got through this winter if it hadn’t been for the help you had been with the mending. Mrs. Pringle, she gave two dollars; and so on all round. You see, we all owe you something, dear, in the way of kindness, for you have always stood ready to help everyone who needed it. We got the schoolmistress to buy the things, for we figured it out that a woman who knew so well what to buy for herself, would know how to set about suiting other people with clothes.”

Nell sat down suddenly and cried as she had not done for many a long day past. She had worn her poor shabby clothes with brave, uncomplaining patience, and had never dreamed that other people would feel sorry for her because of them. But this delicate and unobtrusive kindness, which had stepped in to prevent her from going in her worn garments to the new home, touched her keenly, and she, who had no family, began to feel as if all the world were her kin, and that loneliness was a word out of date and obsolete.