"You laugh too much anyhow," she complained irritably.
When the toilet and breakfast were over, there followed two whole hours of pinochle. Nance came to regard the queen of spades and the jack of diamonds with personal animosity. Whatever possible interest she might have taken was destroyed by the fact that Miss Bobinet insisted upon winning two out of every three games. It soon became evident that while she would not cheat on her own behalf, she expected her opponent to cheat for her. So Nance dutifully slipped her trump cards back in the deck and forgot to declare while she idly watched the flash of diamonds on the wrinkled yellow hands, and longed for the clock to strike the next hour.
At lunch she sat in the kitchen opposite Susan and listened to a recital of that melancholy person's woes. Susan and her mistress, being mutually dependent, had endured each other's exclusive society for close upon twenty years. The result was that each found the other the most stimulating of all subjects of conversation. When Nance was not listening to tirades against Susan up-stairs, she was listening to bitter complaints against Miss Bobinet down-stairs.
In the afternoon she was expected to read at the top of her voice from "The Church Guide," until Miss Bobinet got sleepy; then it was her duty to sit motionless in the stuffy, camphor-laden room, listening to an endless succession of vocal gymnastics until what time the old lady saw fit to wake up.
If Nance had been a provident young person, she might have improved those idle hours during that interminable winter by continuing her study of stenography. But, instead, she crouched on the floor by the window, holding her active young body motionless, while her thoughts like distracted imprisoned things flew round their solid walls of facts, frantically seeking some loophole of escape. Day after day she crouched there, peeping out under the lowered shade with hungry eyes. The dreary street below offered no diversion; sometimes a funeral procession dragged its way past, but for the most part there was nothing to see save an occasional delivery wagon or a staid pedestrian.
She was at that critical time of transition between the romance of childhood, when she had become vaguely aware of the desire of the spirit, and the romance of youth, when she was to know to the full the desires of the flesh. It was a period of sudden, intense moods, followed by spells of languor. Something new and strange and incommunicable was fermenting within her, and nothing was being done to direct those mysterious forces. She was affectionate, with no outlet for her affection; romantic, with nothing for romance to feed upon.