Who she really was, where she had lived, the reason for the mystery that surrounded the affair, the lawyer would not, or could not explain. He had left Malden soon afterward, but was established in Cincinnati—and he met all Nancy’s bills promptly and asked each quarter-day after her health. But he showed no further interest in the little girl.
As for Nancy herself, she remembered nothing before her appearance at the school. And that was not strange. She was a kindergartner when Miss Prentice accepted the responsibility of training her—the very youngest and smallest girl who had ever come to Higbee School.
Miss Prentice was too firm a disciplinarian to be a very warm-hearted woman. Save for Miss Trigg’s awkward attempts at motherliness, and the surreptitious hugs and kisses of certain womanly servants about the school who pitied the lonely child, Nancy Nelson had experienced little affection.
She was popular in a way with her fellow pupils, yet there had always been a barrier between her and the rest of the school. She was the refuge of the dull scholars, or of the little ones who needed help in their lessons; but Nancy never made a real chum.
It was not the girl’s fault. She was heart-hungry for somebody to love, and somebody to love her. But circumstances seemed always to forbid.
A new girl was scarcely settled at Higbee before somebody pointed Nancy out to her as a girl who was “peculiar.” Sometimes the story of Nancy’s coming to the school, and of her circumstances, were sadly twisted. She was often looked upon as a combination of Cinderella and the Sleeping Princess.
However that might be, it set Nancy in a class by herself. Girls came and went at Higbee. Some took the entire course and were graduated. But none save Nancy remained at the school from year’s end to year’s end.
Miss Prentice saw to it that the girl had a sufficient supply of neat and serviceable dresses. She had all that she could possibly need, but little that she really wanted.
When her spending money was increased moderately, Nancy was able to buy herself the little trifles that persons like Miss Prentice never realize a girl’s longing for. Nancy’s private expenditures occasioned even Miss Trigg to say that she was “light-minded” and would never know how to spend money.
They did not take into consideration that Nancy had nobody to give her the little trifles so dear to every growing girl’s heart. She never had a present. That is, nothing save some little things at Christmas from some of the smaller girls whom she had helped. Miss Prentice discouraged the giving of presents among the girls at Higbee. She said it occasioned jealousies, and “odious comparisons” of family wealth.