"For I do see I'm growing cross and hateful," she said to herself. "I can't bear to have the children come and ask me to play, or to do any little favor for them, and I don't like it very much whenever mamma wants me to help her. I know I _felt_ provoked when she asked me to roll the baby's wagon this morning, though I don't think I let her see it. I believe I don't feel so happy or so good, or even so well, as I used to do, and I don't know--I'm afraid it is so much reading and studying makes it so. I think I'll have to make up my mind not to know as much, or to be so quick and clever as Maggie, and Gracie, and some of the others."
But this was a hard resolve for Nellie, and she fell to sleep in no happy frame of mind.
She slept later than usual the next morning, for her mother, remembering how dull and languid she had seemed, would not let her be awakened; and Mrs. Ransom and the children were just finishing breakfast when she came downstairs.
"Why, where's papa?" asked Nellie, seeing his place was vacant.
"A telegram came this morning which called him to town very unexpectedly," said her mother. "He went in and kissed you as you lay asleep, and left his love and good-by for you, and told me to tell you he hoped to see his own old Nellie back when he comes home in a week's time."
Nellie knew what that meant, but she was sorry that papa had gone,--sorry, not only that he should have been obliged to leave home sooner than he had expected, but also that she could not now talk more with him on the matter of her studies.
However, there was her dear mother: she would listen to her, and give her all the advice and help she needed.
The children asked permission to leave the table, which was granted; but Mrs. Ransom herself sat still while Nellie took her breakfast, talking cheerily to her, and trying to tempt her very indifferent appetite by offering a little bit of this or that.
"Nellie," said her mother, when they were alone, "I was thinking of asking you how you would like to be my little housekeeper."
"Your housekeeper, mamma!" echoed Nellie, pausing in the act of buttering her biscuit, and looking at her mother with surprise.
"Yes," answered Mrs. Ransom, "or rather suppose we should be housekeeper together, you being feet and hands, and I being the head. Is that a fair division, think you?"