“Perhaps she’ll want his things,” Oldmeadow mused. “She seems to like them quite immensely already.”
“Ah, but only because she’s going to do something to them,” said Nancy. “Only because she’s going to change them. I don’t think she’d like anything she could do nothing for.”
Nancy had quite grown up. She had seen further than he had. He felt her quiet comment big with intuitive wisdom.
“You see deep, my dear,” he said. “There’s something portentous in your picture, you know.”
“There is something portentous about her, Roger. That is just what I feel. That is just what troubles me.”
“She may be portentous, in relation to us, and what she may do to us,” said Oldmeadow, “but I’m convinced, for all her marvels, that she’s a very ordinary young person. Don’t let us magnify her. If she’s not magnified she won’t work so many marvels. They’re largely an affair, I’m sure of it, of motors and pendants. She’s ordinary. That’s what I take my stand on.”
“If she’s ordinary, why do you feel, too, that she’ll sweep Barney away?” Nancy was not at all convinced by his demonstration.
“Why, because he’s in love with her. That’s all. Her only menace is in her difference; her complacency. What it comes to, I suppose, is that we must hope, if they’re to be happy, that he’ll like her things.”
“Yes; but what it comes to then, Roger, is that we shall lose Barney,” Nancy said.