Olive was uncommunicative,
shy, and stiff with all but a chosen few; Nancy was at ease in all
assemblies. It was Nancy's sympathy and enthusiasm and warmth that
attracted Olive Lord, and it was the combination of Olive's genius and
her need of love, that held Nancy.
Never were two human creatures more unlike in their ways of thought.
Olive had lived in Beulah seven years, and knew scarcely any one because
of her father's eccentricities and his indifference to the world; but
had you immured Nancy in a convent she would have made a large circle of
acquaintances from the window of her cell, before a month passed over
her head. She had an ardent interest in her fellow creatures, and
whenever they strayed from the strict path of rectitude, she was
consumed with a desire to set them straight. If Olive had seen a drunken
man lying in a ditch, she would scarcely have looked at him, much less
inquired his name. Nancy would have sat by until he recovered himself,
if possible, or found somebody to take him to his destination. As for
the delightful opportunity of persuading him of his folly, she would
have jumped at the chance when she was fifteen or sixteen, but as she
grew older she observed a little more reticence in these delicate
matters, at least when she was endeavoring to reform her elders. She had
succeeded in making young Nat Harmon stop cigarette smoking, but he was
privately less convinced of the error of his ways than he was bewitched
by Nancy.
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