The Old Curiosity Shop

In the morning, Nell visits the old church. She meets some children playing in the graveyard—one calls his brother’s grave a garden because of the plants that grow there, and he says the birds like that garden the best because his brother grows it. The sexton arrives, and he and Nell discuss the church. He shows her the wooden boxes he makes by hand. Nell explores the church more thoroughly, captivated by its architecture and rural beauty. She sits with a Bible for a long time, reading and thinking. She leaves, but comes back twice more to sit, read, and think. Late that night, the schoolmaster finds her in the church and carries her home.

The bachelor takes pride in his study of the church’s history. He enjoys the numerous tales that people tell regarding the dead buried there, and he teaches Nell the history. As the sexton’s health improves, he teaches Nell about the church as well. She joins him one day during a gravedigging. Nell asks if the deceased was very young; the sexton says yes and that she was 64 years old. The half-deaf gravedigger disagrees, claiming she was closer to 79. Nell asks if either man gardens, but the sexton says the plants in the graveyard only seem to grow on the graves of those who had “very tender, loving friends” (379). He further explains that the flowers droop because eventually people stop visiting the graves.

Nell sits alone for a while, watching the gravedigger work. The schoolmaster finds her and urges her to be happy. Nell insists she is, but she does admit she feels sad at the thought that people can forget those who died. The grandfather and Nell work to tend the plants in the yard, vowing to make it a beautiful garden.

Nell’s grandfather works hard in the garden, possessing a renewed sense of what he owes Nell; he seems to realize how his selfishness and his gambling has hurt her. The bachelor and the schoolmaster bring books to read aloud to Nell. When Nell likes a story, her grandfather does his best to remember its details so that he can recall them later. The locals soon come to love Nell, and she becomes close with the other school-age children. One day, a young boy asks Nell why people say she will go to be with the angels before springtime. Nell cries, but she promises that she will be his friend for “as long as Heaven would let [her]” (388).

The sexton shows Nell the old well inside the church, deep and empty, and he compares it to a kind of grave. He assures her the well will be filled, closed up, and built over in the springtime.