Terry | Page 9

in
mischief if I knew it was mischief. It looks so right while I'm doing it,
and I don't know how it can be that all of a sudden it goes wrong--"
"Not all of a suddent, Miss Terry. It's always wrong from the beginning
with you. If you would only stop and ask your elders at first 'Is this
wrong?' before you go at it--"
"But I couldn't do that, unless I had an idea that it was going to be
wrong, even perhaps. It always seems to me the rightest, sweetest,
loveliest thing in the world--"
"Now, Terry, how can you look me in the face and say you thought it
was right to take a big, wet, lumbering watch-dog out of his kennel on a
wet day and bring him upstairs to your nursery, dripping his wet over
everything, and then dress him up--"
"Oh, Nancy!" cried Terry, splitting into laughter and putting her hands
before her face. "Oh, now, wasn't it simply deliciously funny? If you
had only been there before he jumped! His eyes were so sweet under
your frills, and his paws were so enchanting coming out of your sleeves.
And if it hadn't been for your spectacles--Now, tell me a story, Nancy,
till it is time to go to Gran'ma."
Terry was so true to her word, did so much reading and stitching and
searching about for little things that were lost, that Granny and Nancy
agreed to think her real conversion had begun through the breaking of
the spectacles. For Nancy had allowed Terry to confess to having
broken the glasses, though she would not have dear old Madam
disturbed by a description of the pranks with the dog. So long as
Nursey had to go groping about as if in the dark, putting her nose to the
carpet in search of the dressing-comb she had dropped out of her hand,
feeling all over the pin-cushion for a pin, and shaking out the
newspaper with an expression on her face which told that it was a
perfectly blank sheet to her: while this state of things went on, Terry
had no time to think of fresh adventures, so eager was she to come to
Nursey's relief with her sharp young eyes and her quick little fingers.

However, a more thorough relief was at hand, and it happened in this
way.
Walsh, the old steward at Trimleston, was the same age as Nancy, and
the same kind of spectacles suited him. He sometimes went a journey
to a town about thirty miles away to pay bills for Madam, and to order
things that were wanted about the place. Granny suddenly discovered
that he might as well take the journey now as wait for the spring. She
gave him a long list of matters to be attended to for her, and then she
said:
"And you had better go to the optician's, Walsh, and choose a pair of
spectacles to suit yourself, and bring them to me for Nurse Nancy."
As soon as Terry saw Nursey's keen brown eyes looking at her through
the familiar little glass windows once more, she felt her remorse slip
away from her, and her liberty return.
"Nursey is able to take care of herself now," she thought, "and I have
nothing to do. I wish I cared about reading, but I don't. I like people to
tell me stories, but nobody has more than a few, and you get to know
them all off by heart. The books always say such a lot between the
happening parts, and if you skip too much you lose part of the story.
The story people all sit down and fold their hands, and wait till the
close thick pages of prosy prosy are over, and when they get up again
and go on they have forgotten their parts. Pappy says I shall like
reading when I'm older; but I'm not older, and I don't like it. I just like
to be doing something, and oh, dear, there is nothing to do!"
Terry was sitting at the nursery fire waiting to be summoned to
Granny's sitting-room. She had on her pretty white frock, her gold curls
were all brushed up into a thousand shining rings, and her blue silk
work-bag was hanging by its ribbons from her arms. She had been
extremely good and quiet all day, and she was intending to behave
nicely to Gran'ma during the evening. She knew exactly all that would
happen. There would be a good tea; oh, yes, Granny did give such good
teas, dear old Gran'ma! And then Terry would sit on a stool beside her,
and embroider a letter on one of Granny's new cambric

pocket-handkerchiefs. After that Terry would read aloud, poetry such
as Gran'ma