It might have been
the echo of their strange surroundings, but they acted as if they had
Indian blood themselves.
They turned about and went out of the tent; they crossed the old road
and climbed the stone-wall. Flora spoke as she picked her way across the
meadow. "Guess I'll buy that basket when my money comes next week," said
she.
Nancy said nothing; she looked gloomy. She stepped in an oozy place and
wet one foot, but she did not mind it. She thought of her eight cents,
and did an example in mental arithmetic. "Eight from fifty leaves
forty-two," she calculated. For the first time she was envious of
Flora. Everybody finds some object to grudge to another. Nancy had found
hers--the sweet-grass basket. If she had expressed her feelings, she
would have said, "Must she have all those pretty dresses and hats and
the sweet-grass basket, too?"
The girls went home silently; they were never great talkers. Flora sat
down in the sitting-room with her aunt; Nancy went up-stairs to the
chamber where she slept with Flora, and got her little purse out of the
corner of her bureau drawer. She counted the eight cents, and puzzled
over the problem how to increase it to fifty. She puzzled over it all
the rest of that day until she went to sleep at nine o'clock. The next
day was Sunday; she puzzled over it as she sat in the pew in church, but
she could not arrive at any solution.
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