ed. The companionship of two quiet lads like Jack and
Harry had tamed her down, and her love of reading and her study of all
the books on history and travel on Jack's book-shelves had softened her
speech. When alone the three spoke with but little of the dialect of the
place, Jack having insisted on improvement in this respect. With Nelly
his task had been easy, for she was an apt pupil, but Harry still
retained some of his roughness of speech.

Nelly was fifteen now, and was nearly as tall as Jack, who was square
and somewhat stout for his age. With these two friends Jack would talk
sometimes of his hopes of rising and making a way for himself. Harry,
who believed devoutly in his friend, entered most warmly into his hopes,
but Nelly on this subject alone was not sympathetic.

"You don't say anything," Jack remarked one day; "do you think my
castles in the air will never come true?"

"I know they will come true, Jack," she said earnestly; "but don't ask
me to be glad. I can't; I try to but I can't. It's selfish, but, but--"
and her voice quivered. "Every step thou takest will carry you farther
up from me, and I can't be glad on it, Jack!"

"Nonsense, Nelly," Jack said angrily, "dos't think so little of me as to
think that I shall not be as true to my two friends, Harry and you, as I
am now?"

The girl shook her head.

"You will try, Jack, you will try. Don't think I doubt you, but--" and
turning round she fled away at full speed.

"I believe she ran away because she was going to cry," Harry said.
"Lasses are strange things, and though in some things Nell's half a lad,
yet she's soft you see on some points. Curious, isn't it, Jack?"

"Very curious," Jack said; "I thought I understood Nell as well as I did
you or myself, but I begin to think I doant understand her as much as I
thought. It comes of her being a lass, of course, but it's queer too,"
and Jack shook his head over the mysterious nature of lasses. "You can't
understand 'em," he went on again, thoughtfully. "Now, if you wanted
some clothes, Harry, and you were out of work, I should just buy you a
set as a matter of course, and you'd take 'em the same. It would be only
natural like friends, wouldn't it?"

Harry assented.

"Now, I've been wanting to give Nelly a gown, and a jacket, and hat for
the last two years. I want her to look nice, and hold her own with the
other lasses of the place--she's as good looking as any--but I daren't
do it. No, I daren't