“Well, I guess I know what I’m talking about,” declared Nancy, “and now, even mother has come around to agree with me. She’s going right on with her office work and you and I are to run this lovely little shop.”
“You mean you are to run the shop and I’ll wash the dishes.” Deepest scorn and seething irony hissed through Teddy’s words. He even flipped the pen-knife into the sink board and nicked, but did not break, the apple-sauce dish.
“Of course you must do your part.” Nancy lifted up two dishes and set them down again.
“And yours, if you have your say. Oh, what’s the use of talkin’ to girls?” Ted tumbled out of the basket, pushed it over until it banged into a soap box, then straightening up his firm young shoulders, he prepared to leave the scene.
“There’s no use talking to girls, Ted,” replied his sister, “if you don’t talk sense.”
“Sense!” He jammed his cap upon his head although he didn’t have any idea of wearing it on this beautiful day. The fact was, Teddy and Nancy were disagreeing. But there really wasn’t anything unusual about that, for their natures were different, they saw things differently, and if they had been polite enough to agree they would simply have been fooling each other.
Nancy smiled lovingly, however, at the boy, as he banged the door. What a darling Ted was! So honest and so scrappy! Of all things hateful to Nancy Brandon a “sissy” boy, as she described a certain type, was the worst.
“But I suppose,” she ruminated serenely, “the old breakfast dishes have got to be done.” Another lifting up and setting down of a couple of china pieces, but further than that Nancy made not the slightest headway. A small mirror hung in a small hall between the long kitchen and the store. Here Nancy betook herself and proceeded again to pat her dark hair.
She was the type of girl described as willowy, because that word is prettier than some others that might mean tall, lanky, boneless and agile. Nancy had black hair that shone with crow-black luster in spite of its pronounced curl. Her eyes were dark, snappy and meaningful. They could mean love, as when Ted slammed the door, or they could mean danger, as when a boy kicked the black and white kitten. Then again they could mean devotion, as when Nancy beheld her idolized little mother who was a business woman as well, and in that capacity, Nancy’s model.
A tingle at the bell that was set for the store alarm, sent the girl dancing away from the looking-glass.