CHAPTER VI.
HULDAH GOES SHOPPING.
Though she made light of it to Mrs.Perry, the fright she had received kept Huldah in a very nervous state for many a day to come.
She lived always in a constant dread of some harm coming to poor Dick, and she was never really easy if he was out of her sight.
By day, her eyes were here, there, and everywhere, fearful that somewhere those two dreaded figures might be lurking about, waiting to attack or steal her Dick; and at night she lay awake hour after hour, thinking she heard sounds in the house or the garden.
Half-a-dozen times she would get out of her bed, shaking with nervousness, yet unable to lie still, and peer out, to see if they really were getting over the garden wall or not, and always she longed for the night to be over.

She felt safer when she was up and about, with Dick under her eye.
Miss Carew grew quite troubled about her--about them both, in fact, for Huldah's nervousness, though she tried to keep it to herself, could scarcely be concealed from Mrs.Perry.
Something must be done to distract the child's mind, she felt,--but what?
And then, as though to solve the difficulty for her, came an order for half a dozen of Huldah's pretty baskets.
No other cure she could have found would have been half so good.
Huldah's spirits went up to a pitch of delight such as she had never known before.

She was full of gratitude and of eagerness to begin, and if Miss Rose had not been able to drive her in to Belmouth that very day to buy the raffia, there was, as Miss Rose said, no knowing what might have happened.
Huldah liked the work, and she had done so little lately that the thought of going back to it was a pleasure in itself, but best of all was the thought of what she would do with the money when she got it.
That thought kept her in one thrill of joy.
She was to have eighteenpence each for the baskets.

Nine whole shillings! It seemed to Huldah a perfect fortune, and she would spend the whole of it on Mrs.Perry.

She would get her in a store of coal, in readiness for the winter; then they would be able to have good fires, and not have to be counting the cost all the time.
That was the first decision.