Having made up her mind, the old lady persuaded a neighbor who sometimes drove by her house to mill to take her in, and leave her at the poor-house, which was on his way, until he came back with his grist. When he returned he found two passengers, for Miss Roxy had fixed on Nancy for an experiment. "'Twas Hobson's choice," she explained to Mr. Tucker, as they drove along; "there wa'n't no other gal there. She's real small, but Miss Simons says she's spry an' handy, and she ha'n't got nobody belongin' to her, so's't I sha'n't be pestered with folks a-comin' round." In six months little Nancy had become so useful that she was formally bound out to the old lady, and now she went to school in summer half a day, and had learned to read and write tolerably. She was very lonesome in that solitary house. There were children at the poor-house whom she played with, tended, and loved, but Miss Roxy had not even a cat; and when Nancy, in the longing of her loving little heart, took a crook-necked squash out of the shed, tied a calico rag about its neck, and made a dolly of it to be company for her in the little garret where she slept, Miss Roxy hunted it up--for she kept count of everything she had--boxed Nancy's ears soundly, and cut up poor little yellow Mary Ann, and boiled her in a pot for pies. Until the mitten business began, Miss Roxy found it hard to find enough work for the child's active fingers to do; but after that she had no trouble in keeping the little girl busy, as poor Nancy found out to her sorrow. The evenings of spring, when she used to love to sit on the door-step with her apron over her head, and listen to the frogs peeping in a swamp far below, were now spent in winding hanks of yarn, or struggling, with stiff little fingers, to slip the loops off one needle and on to another, her eyes tired with the dull light of a tallow candle, and her head aching with the effort to learn and the slaps her dullness earned from Miss Roxy's hard hands. It was worse as summer came on, and she had to knit, knit, all the time, with not a minute to get new posies for her garden. Only by early dawn did she get her chance to watch the blue liverwort open its sunny cup; the white eggs of bloodroot buds come suddenly out of the black ground; the tiny rows of small flowers that children call "Dutchman's breeches" hang and flutter on their red stems; the azure sand-violet, dancing columbine, purple crane's-bill, lilac orchis, and queer moccasin flower make that hidden corner gay and sweet. Even when school began, she had to work still. Miss Roxy was determined to send a big box of double-knit mittens to John Jackson before winter set in; and as fast as they were finished they were dampened, pressed, and laid away in the old hair trunk in the garret where Nancy slept.