How my heart warmed toward the romping Nellie, and how I wondered if after that beam-walking exploit her hooks and eyes were all in their places!  The two little boys, Sally said, were twins, Edward and Egbert, or, as they were familiarly called, Bert and Eddie.  This was nearly all she had learned, if we except the fact that the family ate with silver forks, and drank wine after dinner.  This last, mother pronounced heterodox, while I, who dearly loved the juice of the grape and sometimes left finger marks on the top shelf, whither I had climbed for a sip from grandma’s decanter, secretly hoped I should some day dine with Nellie Gilbert, and drink all the wine I wanted, thinking how many times I’d rinse my mouth so mother shouldn’t smell my breath!

In the course of a few weeks the affairs of the Gilbert family were pretty generally canvassed in Rice Corner, Mercy Jenkins giving it as her opinion that “Miss Gilbert was much the likeliest of the two, and that Mr. Gilbert was cross, overbearing, and big feeling.”

CHAPTER II.

NELLIE.

As yet I had only seen Nellie in the distance, and was about despairing of making her acquaintance when accident threw her in my way.  Directly opposite our house, and just across along green meadow, was a piece of woods which belonged to Mr. Gilbert, and there, one afternoon early in May, I saw Nellie.  I had seen her there before, but never dared approach her; and now I divided my time between watching her and a dense black cloud which had appeared in the west, and was fast approaching the zenith.  I was just thinking how nice it would be if the rain should drive her to our house for shelter, when patter, patter came the large drops in my face; thicker and faster they fell, until it seemed like a perfect deluge; and through the almost blinding sheet of rain I descried Nellie coming toward me at a furious rate.  With the agility of a fawn she bounded over the gate, and with the exclamation of, “Ain’t I wetter than a drownded rat?” we were perfectly well acquainted.

It took but a short time to divest her of her dripping garments, and array her in some of mine, which Sally said “fitted her to a T,” though I fancied she looked sadly out of place in my linen pantalets and long-sleeved dress.  She was a great lover of fun and frolic, and in less than half an hour had “ridden to Boston” on Joe’s rocking-horse, turned the little wheel faster than even I dared to turn it, tried on grandma’s stays, and then, as a crowning feat, tried the rather dangerous experiment of riding down the garret stairs on a board!  The clatter brought up grandma, and I felt some doubts about her relishing a kind of play which savored so much of what she called “a racket,” but the soft brown eyes which looked at her so pleadingly were too full of love, gentleness, and mischief to be resisted, and permission for “one more ride” was given, “provided she’d promise not to break her neck.”