It had been understood
from the very beginning that Nancy was not of her father's world. He
would have been scarcely aware that he had a daughter had he not, at
certain periods, paid bills for her clothes.
"What's a child want with all this?" he had ventured once to say.
"Hardly your business, my dear," his wife had told him. "The child's
clothes are marvellously cheap considering. I don't know how Florice
does it for the money." He resented nothing--it was not his way--but he
did feel, deep down in his heart, that the child was over-dressed, that
it must be bad for any little girl to be praised in the way that his
daughter was praised, that "the kid will grow up with the most
tremendous ideas."
He resented it, perhaps a little, that his young daughter had so easily
accustomed herself to the thought that she had no father. "She might
just want to see me occasionally. But I'd only frighten her, I suppose,
if she did."
Munty Ross had very little of the sentimentalist about him; he was
completely cynical about the value of the human heart, and believed in
the worth and goodness of no one at all.
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