Chapter I

"WHAT'S the use?" said Nelly, with a sort of hopeless bitterness in her tone. "There's no use in my ever trying to be anybody!"

Nelly Ryan was leaning against the rickety gate of her grandmother's more rickety cottage, watching a procession of girls about her own age, who were passing on the other side of the street on their way to church. There were about thirty of them, all very nicely dressed, walking two-and-two, and talking quietly to each other. They were the pupils of an old-established boarding-school in the place where Nelly lived; and, as Nelly looked at their dainty, fresh spring dresses and bonnets, their neat boots and gloves, and white collars, and then at her own ragged, faded delaine, her toes peeping out of a pair of old shoes much too large for her, and the tangled, rusty elf-locks of her hair, she felt the contrast very deeply and bitterly. She was a pretty little girl, about thirteen years old, with curly black hair, gray eyes, and a slender but strong and lithe figure. Not one of all the girls she envied could match her in good looks; but her slender hands were grimed and encrusted with dirt, and her face not much better off; her hair looked as if it had hardly known a comb, and her frock was covered with grease and dirt and torn into various stirrups and three-cornered rents. She might have been called a hopeless-looking child enough; and yet there was something in her face that promised better things. She stood looking after the school-girls till they turned a corner, and then, leaning her head against the gate, she cried bitterly but quietly, all the while saying to herself—

"It's too bad! It's too bad! I can't never be anybody or have any thing! It's too bad!"

"What is the matter, little one?" asked a pleasant voice. Nelly glanced up hastily, wiping away her tears with her dirty hands, so that she looked more forlorn than ever. A young lady stood by the gate, regarding her with an expression of interest and sympathy which Nelly felt at once to be genuine. She was nicely and tastefully though not gayly dressed, and in her hand she held a couple of books, and a little nosegay of early spring flowers,—sweet blue and white violets, primroses, periwinkles, and such like,—with a few geranium and ivy leaves.

As Nelly looked up, she repeated her question, adding, "Are you sick?"

"No," stammered Nelly, shyly, hanging down her head.

"What is the matter?" asked the young lady. "I am sure you must be in some trouble, to cry so bitterly."

But Nelly would not tell the cause of her grief, and very likely could not have done so if she had tried.

"Do you go to Sunday-school?" asked the lady.

"No," answered Nelly.

"That is a pity! Why don't you go? I think you would like it very much."

"I haven't got any thing to wear," said Nelly; and, as if gaining confidence, she added, "I went once to the mission school up here, but the girls were all dressed so fine that I felt ashamed. They stared at me; and one of them called me a little rag-bag. I don't never mean to go there no more. What's the use?"

"She was a very impolite little girl," said Miss Powell (for that was the young lady's name). "I would not have minded her."

"You would if you was me," said Nelly.

Miss Powell smiled. "Well, perhaps so. We cannot always judge for other people. What is your name?"

"Nelly Ryan."

"And do you live here?" asked the young lady, glancing at the house. Nelly looked at it too, and, somehow, as she followed the direction of Miss Powell's eye, she seemed to see, as she had never done before, what a miserable place it was, how black and dirty the floor looked through the open door, and what quantities of old bones, old shoes and other rubbish were littered about the door-yard. The bitter feeling came up in her heart again, as she answered,—

"Yes; I live here with my grandmother. It is a mean old place, but I can't help it. It's the best we've got, anyhow."

"Well, Nelly, I cannot stop any longer now, but I shall perhaps see you again some day, and we will have a talk about these things." She opened the book which she carried, as she spoke, and took out a beautiful little picture printed in colours and representing a string of girls, something like those Nelly had just seen, passing two-by-two into a church-door. There was a hymn under the picture, and a coloured border all round it.

"Would you like this little card?" she asked.

Nelly's eyes brightened. She thought she had hardly ever seen any thing so pretty.

"You may keep it,—and these flowers too, if you like," said Miss Powell. "They will stay fresh and sweet a long time if you give them clean water every day."

Nelly took the flowers and the card without speaking. Miss Powell bade her good-morning and walked on; but presently she heard some one running behind her, and turned around. There was Nelly, almost out of breath.

"I—I only wanted to say, Thank you, ma'am," stammered Nelly; and then, as though almost ashamed of what she had done, she turned and ran back again.

"That is a child of some character," thought Miss Powell, as she quickened her steps. "I must try to see her again."

"What a nice young lady!" said Nelly to herself, as she presently slackened her pace and went along alternately admiring and smelling her flowers and looking at the picture she still carried in her other hand. Presently she glanced at the back of the card, which was coloured a pretty pink, and noticed, to her great mortification, that her dirty fingers had already left their marks upon the paper. The lump came into her throat again at the sight.

"There it is!" said she. "What is the use of my ever trying to have any thing?" And then she stopped suddenly; for the question occurred to her mind, what was there to hinder her from washing her hands?

Full of a new resolution, Nelly walked straight into the house. It consisted only of one room, with a sort of shed or lean-to attached, and held a bed, an old but tolerably whole cooking-stove, two or three more or less broken chairs, and a rickety table, on which stood the remains, such as they were, of the morning's meal. Her grandmother sat on a low stool by the stove, with her elbows on her knees, smoking a short black pipe. Nelly had been in better rooms a few times in her life, and she felt, as she came in, how forlorn the place looked. Again she was tempted to despair; but she had thought of something to do, and she had a deal of perseverance and energy, though nothing had ever been done to cultivate those qualities. She first took a broken tumbler from the shelf, filled it with clean water, in which she put her flowers, and, placing them on the window-sill, stood looking at them with great satisfaction.

"See, granny; a'n't they lovely?"

"'Deed and they are," replied the old woman. "Where did you get them, honey?"

"A lady gave 'em to me. She gave me this picture, too. Can't you read it, granny? What does it say under there?"

"Sure, child, I've forgot all my learning, and not much there was to forget."

"Why can't I have some learning, granny? Why can't I go to school?"

"And what would become of the cow if ye went to school all day, and me hardly able to move? Don't ye worry about that, now. Your father learned to read and write too, and much good it did him."

Nelly sighed,—a sort of fierce, impatient sigh,—and began busily seeking in every corner till she found a pin with which to fasten her card to the wall. Then she searched again till she found an old basin, which she filled with rain-water and carried out into the shed, where presently was heard a great splashing and rubbing. By-and-by Nelly called out, "Granny, where's the soap?"

"And what do you want with the soap, child?" asked the old woman.

"To wash myself."

"What ails the child this morning?" said Mrs. Ryan, in a tone of as much surprise as if such a use of soap had been utterly unknown to her experience. "You'll find it on the end of the shelf; if there is any; but don't you be wasting it. I'll may-be washing to-morrow."

By much searching, Nelly found a small and greasy remnant of soap, which she used to such good purpose that she presently appeared with face and hands perfectly white and clean.

Then came another inquiry—"Where's the comb, granny?"

Followed by the counter-question—"What do you want with it?"

"I want to comb my hair."

"You are wonderful nate this morning, seems to me," said Mrs. Ryan. "What ails you?"

"I like to be decent sometimes," said Nelly. "I felt ashamed this morning when the lady was speaking to me."

"Sure the lady knows we are poor folks," said Mrs. Ryan, good-naturedly laying down her pipe to assist Nelly in her search for the comb. It was finally discovered behind an old band-box on the shelf; but Nelly found the use of it no easy matter. Her curly hair was matted into a hundred knots; and the more she wetted it, the more it twisted and curled into rings, as if it had been alive.

"Granny, I wish you'd cut my hair short, like Kitty Brown's," said Nelly, finally. "I can't never get the tangles out."

Mrs. Ryan wondered more and more what had suddenly taken possession of her grand-daughter; but she was fond of the child, and willing to gratify her where it was not too much trouble; so she hunted up her scissors and clipped Nelly's black rings close to her head, and proceeded farther to part them evenly upon the top, so that they curled round her face in a way that many a modern young lady might have envied.

"Look at yourself in the glass, and see how nice you look," said Mrs. Ryan, as she finished her operation. "There's not a lady in the land any prettier, if you were only dressed up."

"And why can't I be dressed up?" asked Nelly. "Why can't I have things like the Jenkins girls and Kitty Brown?"

"Because we're poor folks, child. Don't I tell you so every day? Just you wait till the money comes from Ireland I told you of, and then see the silks and satins I'll buy you, and the gold watches and diamond rings you'll have!"

"I don't want diamond rings and gold watches; and a pretty figure I'd make dressed up in silks and satins, and me not knowing how to read," said Nelly, pettishly. "I want to be decent now; and I don't believe the money ever will come from Ireland. I don't believe there is any money there."

"Then it is a wicked, ungrateful child you are, not to believe your own granny," said Mrs. Ryan, much displeased by this profession of unbelief on Nelly's part. "Haven't I told you over and over how my father was second cousin to the Earl of Glengall, that was descended from the old Butler that was king in Ireland long ago? And didn't I tell you about his visiting my lord, and the racehorses he kept, and the servants he had? And don't it stand to reason, when the old lord died without children—"

"I don't want to hear about it," interrupted Nelly. "I'm tired of it. If my great-grandfather was cousin to all the lords in Ireland, it won't ever do us any good." So saying, Nelly flung out of the house and resumed her old position of leaning over the gate.

There had been a time when Nelly took great delight in these golden visions of her grandmother's, and could spend hours in listening to Mrs. Ryan's tales of the grandeur of her father's family, and in dreaming over them in her own mind. To the old woman herself they were meat and drink, clothing and fire-wood. She had arranged all in her own mind a hundred times,—how a letter was to come from foreign parts, telling her the news that she had succeeded to the estates of her father's cousin,—how a grand gentleman, with a splendid carriage and footmen in livery, such as she had often seen in her childhood, should drive up to the door and take in herself and Nelly, while all the neighbours stood staring,—how he would buy them all manner of fine things, and she should be a countess no less, and Nelly would be called Lady Eleanor. All this she had gone over in her own mind, and talked over with Nelly a thousand times, almost always concluding with,—

"And then the folks where ye go now to carry the milk and bring home the swill will be glad enough to get the nod of your head as you ride through the streets in your grand carriage before you go home to old Ireland, my bird."

Kelly used to love these stories dearly, and to believe them every word; but she had lately been growing tired of them. As she grew older, the trials of her position pressed upon her. She saw the difference between herself and other girls of her age whose fathers and mothers worked for them and sent them to school. She began to have a perception that it would be wiser for her grandmother and herself to take some pains with the small piece of ground they could call their own, than to spend all their time in talking about the grand flower-gardens and parks of the Earl of Glengall. Mrs. Vandake had no more land than they had, and she had a deal more work to do; yet Mrs. Vandake, with what help her husband could give her before and after hours, raised cabbages and lettuce and peas and beans and tomatoes and grapes, and many a flower beside. It was easy to talk of the silks and satins she would wear when she was Lady Eleanor; but meantime the Vandake children went to church and school nicely dressed, with whole shoes and stockings, and warm mittens and hoods for cold days, while Nelly's only two frocks were in rags, and her old shoes kept out neither snow nor water.

Nelly was naturally a bright, thoughtful child, with very strong feelings and a tendency to brooding and sadness. As she pondered over these things, and felt more and more the disadvantages of her position and manner of life, she began to doubt and to dislike her grandmother's stories, and ended by disbelieving them altogether.

"I don't believe there was ever any such earl," said she, as she went out to the gate. "I don't believe my grandfather was first cousin to anybody."

Nelly certainly stated the case strongly. She was hardly fair to her grandmother's romance, however, which, strange as it may seem, had a small foundation in fact. Mrs. Ryan's father was the youngest son of a younger son of one of the Earls of Glengall, who, in a drunken fit, had married the daughter of one of his lordship's tenants. There was no particular disparity of fortune between the parties, for neither of them had a penny beforehand; but the Butlers stood greatly upon their gentility as relations of my lord's, and were so terribly shocked at the match that they refused to have any thing to do with either Alick or his wife. To be sure, after Alick broke his neck off the bridge coming home from a fair one dark night, they sent some assistance to his widow and her baby girl; but they were poor enough themselves, and had hard work to keep soul and body together, and at last went away to Canada altogether.

Gracey Butler grew up like the other barefooted girls in the cottages round about; but her mother never let her forget that she was third cousin to an earl, and if every one had his rights, as she was fond of saying, the park where Gracey went nutting, and the great house which she saw from the outside, would all be hers some day. But every one did not have his rights; or, as is more probable, there were no rights to have. Gracey grew up and married Tim Ryan, and came away to America, and reared up a son who fell into bad courses and got into State's prison, where he died. Nelly's mother took to drink and died also, leaving this one little girl to her grandmother's care. Mrs. Ryan owned her house, such as it was, and she also owned a pig and one cow, which pastured upon the commons, watched by Nelly, in the summer, and lived in winter on the slops which Nelly gathered from house to house.

The one thing about which Mrs. Ryan was neat was her milk; and as she was also perfectly honest, gave good measure and never sold water, she had as many customers as she could supply. Nelly carried round the milk and fed the cow and gathered the slops, and the old woman cooked and washed after her fashion, and milked, and measured the milk, and smoked her pipe, and now and then took a drink (but not often), and entertained herself and Nelly in the manner we have described; and while Nelly was a little child she was perhaps as happy as most children. Her grandmother never ill-treated her; she had enough to eat, such as it was, and she loved to hear about all the grandeur she was heir to. But she was growing a great girl. She began to think, to reason, and to compare; and she grew more and more unhappy and dissatisfied every day.