Gradually Nancy’s sense of honor was coming back into its own, for not only her mother but also her girl friends were constantly reassuring her.
“There’s nothing small nor frivolous about changing one’s mind for the better,” they told her. “In fact,” said the mother, “that one is willing to do so, is very often a mark of progress. If we didn’t change our minds how could we grow wiser?”
“But I thought I’d just love business,” Nancy complained. “I was crazy to keep store and now I’m crazy to start something else.”
“Which is perfectly normal and entirely reasonable for any healthy young girl,” her mother insisted. “Can you imagine girls being as staid and as old fashioned as their mothers?”
“Moth-thur!” Nancy sort of moaned, “If ever I could be as new fashioned as my mother I shouldn’t mind how old nor how young I might be. And you are a love not to scold me. I know you are glad to see Manny so happy setting-up her school, and I know you will be better satisfied to have her there, facing the fierce public, than allowing me to do so. Not that I had any trouble with the dear public,” Nancy mocked. “And not that Brother Ted wasn’t always within a few miles call if I needed him. But, at any rate, Mums, I did make some real money, didn’t I?” she cooed, quite birdlike for Nancy.
A clean little, yellow bankbook was offered for evidence by Mrs. Brandon at this question, for being a business woman, she knew the value of personal interest in every part of a business undertaking, and so, early in the experiment, she had brought Nancy into the City Bank and there attended to the formalities of opening her bank account.
“Mother, you keep the book, please,” Nancy begged just now, as Mrs. Brandon offered it to her. “I know I ought to be very careful and not forget where I put things, but somehow I do. And I would hate to lose that precious book,” she murmured, touching her mother’s cheek with her lips as she made the appeal.
“Very well, daughter,” Mrs. Brandon conceded, “but you simply must learn to remember, and the way to do that is think of a thing as you do it,” she advised.
Nancy was, however, already improving in such matters. Being obliged to find things for herself, instead of calling out to Anna, the maid, as she had been in the habit of doing, was teaching a lesson that words had never been able to convey to her.
It now lacked but three days of the opening of the class, and in these days Nancy and Ted were planning to have a great time fishing, exploring, and hunting. By “hunting” they meant looking for Indian relics along the river bank, for Ted insisted there really were such articles to be found there, if one were only patient enough in the search.