"Good-day! Good-day! I'm glad I came. We'll know each other better after a while. We understand each other, eh? The hatchet is buried, eh? Good. It's a piece of business I've been putting off for a long while. Tut-tut! Where's my umbrella?"
The three Prescotts stood at the window, staring with varying feelings at the stooped, but surprisingly agile old figure that walked off through the rain and fog, head down, the worn velvet collar of his old coat hunched around his neck—and with never a look behind. Then, all at once, both Alma and Nancy broke out laughing.
"You seemed to get along with him beautifully," chuckled Alma. "Goodness, he scared me out of my five wits—so that I couldn't understand a word he was saying. I couldn't tell you for the life of me what he was talking about. I think he must be crazy. But he doesn't seem so bad at all. At times he even looked rather nice."
"Why, I believe he is nice," said Nancy. "He's a funny, eccentric old man, but I'm sure that he'd be rather a dear, if he doesn't think that we are trying to 'manage' him as he says."
Mrs. Prescott was silent, her pretty face frowning a little. Nancy looked at her a moment, and then putting her arms around her, rubbed her own ruddy cheek against her mother's pink one.
"Put yourself in his place, Mother," she said gently. "He's very lonely—he wants to be friendly—he was thinking of Father all the time, you know. But he has a horror of our being affectionate with him just for the sake of his money. Imagine what it would be to be a lonely old man, always troubled by the thought that the only reason people would be nice to him was because they were hoping to profit by it."
"He made it very clear that he has no intention of—of helping us in that way," said Mrs. Prescott.
"And I'm glad of it. I'm glad of it!" cried Nancy. "I don't want to act and think and live to conciliate a rich relative. I think that must be the most hateful position in the world. I want to forget that Uncle Thomas is very rich and very old—just as he wants us to forget it. I want to make my own life, and have no one to thank or to blame for whatever I accomplish but myself."
"What an independent lassie! You are right, dear," said Mrs. Prescott, touching the little curls around Nancy's flushed face affectionately. "You are right. You are like a boy, aren't you? I was never that way myself—and that was the trouble. You have such good sense, my dear. Whatever am I going to do without you?"