"Devil!" she said, and walked out of the room, leaving us standing staring at each other, speechless, and I noted with glee that, on one occasion at least, I saw Hugh Pitcairn abashed.
This occurrence in the court did not pass in the town unnoticed, for Bishop Ames, of St. Margaret's, on the following Sunday preached from the text: "And a little child shall lead them," telling the story from the pulpit; while the Sentinel of the next week spoke of Nancy with flattery and tenderness. The publicity given to the affair alarmed me in no small degree, and I reasoned with myself that a child who had such fearlessness and such disrespect for established ways was a problem which somebody wiser than myself should have the handling of.
There were three other occurrences which fell about this time which brought this thought still more vividly to my mind, the first of these bringing the knowledge that she had no religion. Entering the hall one morning I met the little creature coming from the stairway, dragging an enormous book behind her as though it were a go-cart. She had put a stout string through the middle of the volume, and with this passed round her waist was making her way with it toward the library.
"Jock," she said, backing at sight of me and sitting down upon the great volume as though it were a footstool, "did you ever read a book called Old Testament?"
"Not so much as I should," I answered, realizing with a strange jolt of mind that it was the Bible she was dragging after her.
"I got it in the attic," she said, as she climbed upon my knee, "and I thought at first it was a joke-book. And after I thought it was a fairy-book; but as I go on, there seems more to it."
And the second of these episodes was as disconcerting:
The dwarfed boy was Nancy's peculiar care among the Burnside people, and the question as to why he was made "crookit," as she called it, was one which I had never been able to answer to her satisfaction.
Coming in one day with a little bunch of violets for me, she stopped before leaving the room, and said, as though telling me a funny secret:
"Jamie Henderlin took Nancy's money."