"Yes, I am afraid that was it, Nellie," said Mrs. Ransom. "Your mind was so taken up with something else that you could not give proper attention to your little sister. I am sorry I did not come myself to put her to bed."
It was the second time that day that Nellie might have been helpful to her mother, but she had only brought trouble upon her.
She stood silent and mortified.
Mr. Ransom took Daisy from her mother and laid her back in her crib, taking care that she was perfectly secured this time; then went downstairs. But Daisy was not to be consoled, unless mamma sat beside her and held her hand till she went to sleep; so Mrs. Ransom remained with her, dismissing Carrie also to bed.
Nellie assisted her to undress, making very sure that nothing was forgotten this time, and then returned to see if her mother was ready to go downstairs. But Daisy was most persistently wide awake; her fall had roused her from her first sleep very thoroughly; and she found it so pleasant to have mamma sitting there beside her that she had no mind to let herself float off to the land of dreams, but kept constantly exciting herself with such remarks as —
"Mamma, the's a lot of tadpoles in the little pond." – "Mamma, the's lots of niggers in Newport; oh! I forgot, you told me not to say niggers; I mean colored, black people." – "Mamma, when I'm big I'll buy you a gold satin dress." Or suddenly rousing just as her mother thought she was dropping off to sleep, and putting the startling question, "Mamma, if I was a bear, would you be my mamma?" and mamma unhappily replying "No," she immediately set up a dismal howl, which took some time to quiet.
Finding this to be the state of affairs, and warned by her mother's uplifted finger not to come in the room, Nellie went downstairs again, meaning to return to her former occupation. But, to her surprise, the Bible, which she remembered leaving open, was closed and laid aside, her papers all gone.
"Why," she said, "who has meddled with my things, I wonder?"
"I put them all away, Nellie," said her father.
"I am going to write more, papa."
"Not to-night. Put on your hat and come out with me for a little walk," said Mr. Ransom.
Nellie might have felt vexed at this decided interference with her work; but the pleasure of a moonlight walk with papa quite made up for it, and she was speedily ready, and her hand in his.
Mr. Ransom led her down upon the beach, Nellie half expecting all the time some reproof for the neglect which had caused so much trouble; but her father uttered none, talking cheerfully and pleasantly on other subjects.
It was a beautiful evening. The gentle waves, shimmering and glancing in the moonlight, broke softly on the beach with a soothing, sleepy sound; and the cool salt breeze which swept over them came pleasantly to Nellie's flushed, hot cheeks and throbbing head. She and her father had the beach pretty much to themselves at this hour; and, finding a broad, flat stone which offered a good resting-place, they sat down upon it, and watched the waves as they curled and rippled playfully upon the white sands.
"Now," thought Nellie, when they were seated side by side, – "now, surely, papa is going to find fault with me; and no wonder if he does. Twice to-day I've made such trouble for mamma, when I never meant to do a thing! I don't see what ailed me to-day. It has been a horrid day, and every thing has gone wrong."
And Nellie really did not know, or perhaps I should say had not considered, what it was that had made every thing go wrong with her for the greater part of the day.
But no; again she was pleasantly disappointed. Papa talked on as before, and called her attention to the white sails of a ship gleaming far off in the silver moonlight, and told her an interesting story of a shipwreck he had once witnessed on this coast.
As they were on their way home, however, and when they had nearly reached the house, Mr. Ransom said, —
"Nellie, what is this you are so busy with, my daughter?"
"What, my writing do you mean, papa?" asked Nellie, looking up at him.
"Yes, some Bible lesson, is it not?"
"Not just a lesson, papa," answered Nellie. "Miss Ashton gave us three or four subjects to study over a little this summer, if we chose, and to find as many texts about as we could; but it is not a lesson, for we need not do it unless we like, and have plenty of time."
"Then it is not a task she set you?" said Mr. Ransom.
"Oh, no, papa! not at all. She said she thought it would be a good plan for us to read a little history every day, or to take any other lesson our mammas liked, but she did not even first speak of this of herself; for Gracie Howard asked her to give us some subjects to hunt up texts about, and then Miss Ashton said it would be a good plan for us to spend a little time at that if we liked, and she gave us four subjects. She said it would help to make us familiar with the Bible."
"Yes," said Mr. Ransom musingly, and as if he had not heeded, if indeed he had heard, the last sentence of her speech.
"And I have such a long list, papa," continued Nellie, "that is, on the first subject; and on the second I have a good many, too, but I am not through with that. I had very few the day before yesterday; but then, you know, Maggie Bradford came to see me, and she is doing it, too, and she had so many more than I had that I felt quite ashamed. Then the same afternoon I had a letter from Gracie Howard, and she told me she had more than a hundred on the first, and nearly a hundred on the second; so I felt I must hurry up, or maybe all the others would be ahead of me. I've been busy all day to-day finding texts, and copying them."
"Is that all you have done to-day?" asked Mr. Ransom.
Nellie cannot gather from his tone whether he approves or not; but it seems to her quite impossible that he should not consider her occupation most praiseworthy.
"Oh, no, papa!" she answered. "I have done several things besides. I read nearly twenty pages of my history twice over, and learned every one of the dates; then I studied a page of Speller and Definer, and a lesson in my French Phrase-book, and did four sums, and said '7 times' and '9 times' in the multiplication table, each four times over. 7's and 9's are the hardest to remember, so I say those the oftenest. I did all those lessons and half an hour's sewing before I went to my texts; but I've been busy with those almost ever since."
"And you have had no walk, no play, all day?" questioned Mr. Ransom.
Nellie was not satisfied with her father's tone now; it did not by any means express approbation.
"I have not played any, papa, but I had some exercise; for all the time I was learning my French phrases, I was rolling the baby's wagon around the gravel walk."
"And it was pretty much the same thing yesterday, was it not?" said Mr. Ransom.
"Well, yes, papa," rather faintly.
"Nellie," said her father, "did you ever hear the old couplet, 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy'?"
"Yes, papa," answered Nellie, half laughing, half reluctantly, as she began to fear that her father intended to interfere with her plans for study. "But am I 'a dull boy'?"
"Neither 'dull' nor a 'boy,'" answered her father, playfully shaking the little hand in his. "But I fear there is danger of the former, Nellie, if you go on taking so much 'work' and no 'play.' Miss Ashton did not desire all this, if I understand you, my dear."
"Oh, no, papa! I was just doing it of myself. Miss Ashton only said, if our papas and mammas did not object, she thought it would be wiser for us to have a little lesson or reading every day. But you see, papa" – Nellie hesitated, and then came to a full stop.
"Well?" said her father, encouragingly.
"Papa, I seem to be so far behind all the girls of my age in our class. It makes me feel ashamed, and as if I must do all I could to catch up with them."
"I do not know," said Mr. Ransom. "It seems to me that a little girl who keeps the head of her spelling, history, and geography classes for at least a fair share of the time, and who has taken more than one prize for composition and steady, orderly conduct,