“You took to her as much as they all did, then?”
“That would be rather difficult, wouldn’t it? And Barney’s reasons would hardly be those of a dry old aunt. She was very nice and kind to Nancy and me and she’s evidently going to do everything for them. Barbara’s already, you know, been sent to that admirable school that was too expensive for Eleanor; riding and singing and all the rest of it. And Meg’s been given a perfect trousseau of fine clothes for her London season. Naturally I don’t feel very critically towards her.”
“Don’t you? Well, if she weren’t a princess distributing largess, wouldn’t you? After all, she’s not given Nancy a trousseau. So why be mute with an old friend?”
“Ah, but she’s given her the pearls,” said Mrs. Averil. “Nancy couldn’t but accept a bridesmaid’s gift. And she would give her a trousseau if she wanted it and would take it. However, I’ll own, though decency should keep me mute, that I should find myself a little bored if I had to see too much of her. I’m an everyday person and I like to talk about everyday things.”
“I can hear her asking you, in answer to that, if there is anything more everyday than the human soul. I wish I could have seen you aux prises with her,” Oldmeadow remarked. “Did she come down here? Did she like your drawing-room and garden?”
Mrs. Averil’s drawing-room and garden lay very near her heart. Eleanor Chadwick sometimes accused her of caring more about her china and her roses than about anything else in the world except Nancy.
“I don’t think she saw them; not what I call see,” Mrs. Averil now said. “Oh, yes; she came several times and recognized, very appreciatively, the periods of my Queen Anne furniture and my Lowestoft. Beyond their period I don’t think she went. She said the garden was old-world,” Mrs. Averil added, looking about her and twirling her parasol on her shoulder.
“She would,” Oldmeadow agreed. “That’s just what she would call it. And she’d call you a true, deep-hearted woman and Nancy a gifted girl. How do she and Nancy hit it off? It’s that I want most of all to hear about.”
“They haven’t much in common, have they?” said Mrs. Averil. “She’s never hunted and doesn’t, I imagine, know a wren from a hedge-sparrow. She does know a skylark when she hears one, for she said ‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit’ while one was singing. But I felt, somehow, it was like the Queen Anne and the Lowestoft—a question of the label.”
Oldmeadow at this began to laugh with an open and indulged mirth. He and Mrs. Averil, at all events, saw eye to eye. “If you’d tie the correct label to the hedge-sparrow she’d know that, too,” he said. “Poor girl. The trouble with her isn’t that she doesn’t know the birds, but that she wouldn’t know the poets, either, without their labels. It’s a mind made up of labels. No; I don’t think it likely that Nancy, who hasn’t a label about her, will get much out of her—beyond necklaces.”