as her daughter.

"Yes, I seen her," answered Sally, "and I guess she's weakly, for the
minit she got into the house she lay down on the sofa, which Mr.
Gilbert says cost seventy-five dollars. That tall, proud-lookin' thing
they call Miss Adaline, but I'll warrant you don't catch me puttin' on
the miss. I called her Adaline, and you had orto seen how her big eyes
looked at me. Says she, at last, 'Are you one of pa's new servants?"

"'Servants!' says I, 'no indeed; I'm Mrs. Michael Welsh, one of your
nighest neighbors.'

"Then I told her that there were two nice girls lived in the house
with me, and she'd better get acquainted with 'em right away; and then
with the hatefulest of all hateful laughs, she asked if 'they wore
glass beads and went barefoot.'"

I fancied that neither Juliet nor Anna were greatly pleased at being
introduced by Sally, the housemaid, to the elegant Adaline Gilbert,
who had come to the country with anything but a favorable impression
of its inhabitants. The second daughter, the one about my own age,
Sally said they called Nellie; "and a nice, clever creature she is,
too--not a bit stuck up like t'other one. Why, I do believe she'd
walked every big beam in the barn before she'd been there half an
hour, and the last I saw of her she was coaxing a cow to lie still
while she got upon her back!"

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 abou