ueling, dry-as-dust,
nose-to-the-grindstone lessons, during which Nancy's speech was
vivisected. At two o'clock they lunched, and Nancy had further
critical instructions. The dishes she had once been allowed to order
were changed, greatly to her annoyance; Mrs. MacGregor liked such
honest stuff as mutton chops and potatoes, just as she insisted upon
oatmeal for breakfast. Porridge, she called it. In the afternoon
they motored; Mrs. MacGregor, who detested speed, became the bane of
the hard-faced chauffeur's life.

They dined at seven, and for an hour thereafter Mrs. MacGregor
either read aloud from some book intended to edify the young person,
or forced Nancy to do so. She was possibly the only person alive who
delighted in Hannah More. She said, modestly, that at an early age
she had been taught to revere this paragon, and whatever happy
knowledge of the virtues proper to the female state she possessed,
she owed in a large measure to that model writer. Nancy conceived
for Hannah More a hatred equaled in intensity only by that cherished
for Mrs. MacGregor herself.

Mrs. MacGregor's notions of dress and her own were asunder, even as
the poles. But here again that rigid duenna did her invaluable
service, for if she didn't look handsome in the clothes selected
for her, she didn't, as that lady said frankly, look vulgar in them.
No longer would you be liable to mistake her for somebody's
second-rate housemaid on her day out. The simple diet and the
inexorable regularity of her hours also told in her favor, although
she herself wasn't as yet aware of the change taking place. Already
you could tell that hers was a supple and shapely young body, with
promise of a magnificent maturity; you glimpsed behind the fading
freckles a skin like a water-lily for creamy whiteness; and that red
hair of hers, worn without frizzings, began to take on a glossy,
coppery luster.

That spring they moved into the new house. It was so different from
the average newly-rich American home that it moved even Mrs.
MacGregor to praise. Nancy thought it rather bare. It hadn't color
enough, and there were but few pictures. Yet the old rosewood and
mahogany furniture pleased her. She remembered that golden-oak,
red-plush parlor at Baxter's with a sort of wonder. Why! she had
thought that parlor handsome! And now she was beginning to
understand how hideous it had been.

She saw little of Mr. Champneys, who seemed to be plunged to the
eyes in busines