"Nancy will not be with us next Saturday," she said regretfully. "She's
going home."
CHAPTER XII
CLARKE'S
Nance Molloy came out of Forest Home, an independent, efficient girl,
with clear skin, luminous blue eyes, and shining braids of fair hair. She
came full of ideals and new standards and all the terrible wisdom of
sixteen, and she dumped them in a mass on the family in Calvary Alley and
boldly announced that "what she was going to do was a-plenty!"
But like most reformers, she reckoned too confidently on cooperation. The
rest of the Snawdor family had not been to reform school, and it had
strong objections to Nance's drastic measures. Her innovations met with
bitter opposition from William J., who indignantly declined to have the
hitherto respected privacy of his ears and nose invaded, to Mrs. Snawdor,
who refused absolutely to sleep with the windows open.
"What's the sense in working your fingers off to buy coal to heat the
house if you go an' let out all the hot air over night?" she demanded.
"They've filled up yer head with fool notions, but I tell you right now,
you ain't goin' to work 'em off on us. You kin just tell that old maid
Stanley that when she's had three husbands and five children an' a step,
an' managed to live on less'n ten dollars a week, it'll be time enough
fer her to be learnin' me tricks!"
"But don't all this mess ever get on your nerves? Don't you ever want to
clear out and go to the country?" asked Nance.
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