"That would be awfully nice, but one can't make it a business, Uncle Thomas, or all the niceness would go out of it. I think one ought to plan out all the difficult things, and leave all the—the dreadfully nice things to Chance, or Providence,—or—well, just let them happen where they belong."
"You're a little Madame Solomon, aren't you, eh?" said Uncle Thomas with a short chuckle. "And how are you going to work your way through college? I shouldn't think that Miss Leland's would be exactly the place for a young lady with your ideas."
"It wouldn't be, if I aired them all over the place—but I've learned to keep my ideas to myself," said Nancy, thinking how Mildred Lloyd would scoff at her "highbrow" ambitions. Uncle Thomas shot a quick, keen glance at her from under his bushy brows.
"Well, you are a wise young lady. Now, who in the world taught you that—to keep your ideas to yourself? Eh?"
"Why, there's nothing very wise in that," said Nancy, surprised at his tone of warm approval. "I know what I want, and if I'm with people who think it's a foolish thing to want, why, I don't talk about it—that's all."
"Well, my dear, permit me to say that I think that in time you are going to have even more sense than my good Elizabeth."
"You—you aren't laughing at me, Uncle Thomas? Do you think I'm trying to show off?" asked Nancy timidly, unwilling to believe his sincere praise; and she looked anxiously and shyly into his face to detect a smile if there was one. But there wasn't.
"Laughing at you? My dear child—what nonsense! Bless my soul, but you are certainly my boy's daughter!"
Then, after a short silence, and just as Nancy was on the point of telling him an amusing little incident about Charlotte, he interrupted her abruptly and irrelevantly:
"I say,—you like that young man, eh?"