Martha softly stroked the bright blue border, and felt its texture between her fingers; while she deliberated within herself whether she could not buy it from the fund procured by the bilberry picking in the autumn.

As Stephen had never known the full amount, she could withdraw the half-crown without his knowledge, and the sixpence a week she could save out of her own earnings.

In ten minutes, while Andrew was bargaining with some of the others, she came to the conclusion that she could not possibly do any longer without a new shawl; so, telling the packman that she would be back again directly, she ran as swiftly as she could over the cinder-hill homewards.
In her hurry to accompany Bess to the lane, she had left her cabin door unfastened, never thinking of the danger of the open pit to her blind grandfather and the child.

Little Nan had been wearying all morning for a run in the wintry sunshine, out of the close steam of washing in the small hut; but Martha had not dared to let her run about alone, as she had been used to do at Fern's Hollow, in their safe garden.

After Martha and Black Bess had left her, the child stood looking wistfully through the open door for some time; but at last she ventured over the door-sill, and her tiny feet painfully climbed the frozen bank behind the house, whence she could see the group of girls in the lane below.