Page:Saxe Holm's Stories, Series Two.djvu/285

Rh "I suppose he 'll like these red stockings as well as any," said she, quietly. "They are very nice.

The man looked askance at them.

"Powerful bright, aint they? I should n't like 'em myself; but perhaps he won't mind;" and he walked away with them.

"What 'll you wager they don't come back?" said Sarah. "Nothing," said Netty. "I expect them."

The afternoon wore on, and the red stockings did not come back. The last man from the last ward had come, taken his Sunday ration of clean clothes, and gone, and not a single pair of stockings was left on the shelf.

"Was n't it lucky I put those red stockings off on that poor toothache fellow in his sleep?" laughed Netty. "I should have come one pair short if I had n't." The words had not more than left her lips when a shadow darkened the linen room. She looked up; there in the door-way stood the man who had taken the red stockings; he held them in his hand, and fidgeted with them uneasily as he said:— "Sorry to trouble ye, marm, but Wilson 's waked up, and he won't have these stockings no how; and I had to bring 'em back, if it would n't trouble ye too much to change 'em for something else; anything 'll do, he said, that aint red."

Netty pointed to the empty shelf; "I 'm very sorry," she said; "but you can see, that is my stocking shelf; I have n't a pair left."