While the gruel was
heating, she spun round the room in quest of amusement; and
her sudden jerks and flings from one place and thing to
another had so much of lawlessness, that Ellen was in
perpetual terror as to what she might take it into her head to
do next.
"Where does that door lead to?"
"I believe that one leads to the garret," said Ellen.
"You _believe so?_ why don't you say it does, at once?"
"I haven't been up to see."
"You haven't! you expect me to believe that, I s'pose? I am
not quite such a gull as you take me for. What's up there?"
"I don't know, of course."
"Of course! I declare I don't know what you are up to exactly;
but if you won't tell me, I'll find out for myself pretty
quick — that's one thing."
She flung open the door and ran up; and Ellen heard her feet
trampling overhead from one end of the house to the other; and
sounds, too, of pushing and pulling things over the floor; it
was plain Nancy was rummaging.
"Well," said Ellen, as she turned uneasily upon her bed, "it's
no affair of mine; I can't help it, whatever she does. But oh!
wont Aunt Fortune be angry!"
Nancy presently came down with her frock gathered up into a
bag before her.
"What do you think I have got here?" said she, "I s'pose you
didn't know there was a basket of fine hickory-nuts up there
in the corner? Was it you or Miss Fortune that hid them away
so nicely? I s'pose she thought nobody would ever think of
looking behind that great blue chest and under the feather-
bed, but it takes me! — Miss Fortune was afraid of your
stealing 'em, I guess, Ellen?"
"She needn't have been," said Ellen, indignantly.
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