Nancy approached these
joys--diffidently and with caution. She rode upon the horse, opened the
doll's-house, embraced the dolls, but she had no natural imagination to
bestow upon them, and the horse and the dolls, hurt, perhaps, at their
long neglect, received her with frigidity. Those grubby little children
in the Square would, she knew, have been "there" in a moment. She began
then to be frightened. The nursery, her bedroom, the dark little passage
outside, were suddenly alarming. Sometimes, when she was sitting quietly
in her nursery, the house was so silent that she could have screamed.
"I don't think Miss Nancy's quite well, ma'am," said the nurse.
"Oh, dear! What a nuisance," said Mrs. Ross who liked her little girl to
be always well and beautiful. "I do hope she's not going to catch
something."
"She doesn't take that pleasure in her clothes she did," said the nurse.
"Perhaps she wants some new ones," said her mother. "Take her to
Florice, nurse." Nancy went to Florice, and beautiful new garments were
invented, and once again she was squeezed, and tightened, and stretched,
and pulled.
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