"We have not much time at our disposal just now, and I cannot say all I would wish; but you won't find it all plain sailing at school, Nellie, and you will be none the worse of having some one to stand by you, so will you have me for a friend?"
[Illustration: "Will you have me for a friend?"]
The quaint gipsy face with its framework of wavy hair; the bright, sunny countenance and laughing lips; above all, the soft, childish voice, charmed simple-hearted Nellie, who willingly grasped the hand extended, with these words, "I shall be only too pleased indeed." So the compact was sealed--a compact which remained unbroken through the long months and years that followed. Time and adversity only served to strengthen the bond, and the gray twilight of life found the friends of childhood's days friends still.
"Hark to the bell! are you ready?" asked Winnie, stretching her lazy little form and rising reluctantly from the cosy corner; "now for a long, long lecture on subject and predicate, ugh! How I do hate lessons, to be sure;" and Miss Blake, parting the tapestried curtains, stepped along the hall with a very mutinous face.
Nellie having come to school with the fixed determination to make the most of her time, prepared to listen to the master's instructions with all due attention; but Winnie's incessant fidgeting and yawning baffled every attempt, and the ludicrous answers, given with tantalizing readiness, almost upset her gravity, despite Mr. King's unconcealed vexation.
"This is one of her provoking days," whispered a girl, noting Nellie's puzzled face; "she will tease and annoy each teacher as much as possible all this afternoon---she always does so when in these moods. Do not think her stupid, Miss Latimer; as the French master often says, 'It is not lack of ability, but lack of application.' She won't learn," and Agnes Drummond, one of Winnie's stanchest allies, shook her head admonishingly at the little dunce as she spoke; but a defiant pout of the rosy lips was the only answer vouchsafed to the friendly warning, and the next moment an absurdly glaring error brought down on Winnie the righteous indignation of her irritated teacher, and resulted in solitary confinement during recess.