He was very silent at his wife's parties, and sometimes dropped his h's.

What Mrs.Munty had been before her marriage no one quite knew, but now she was flaxen and slim and beautifully clothed, with a voice like an insincere canary; she had "a passion for the Opera," a "passion for motoring," "a passion for the latest religion," and "a passion for the simple life." All these things did the shrimps enable her to gratify, and "the simple life" cost her more than all the others put together.
Heaven had blessed them with one child, and that child was called Nancy.
Nancy, her mother always said with pride, was old for her age, and, as her age was only just five, that remark was quite true.

Nancy Ross was old for any age.

Had she herself, one is compelled when considering her to wonder, any conception during those first months of the things that were going to be made out of her, and had she, perhaps at the very commencement of it all, some instinct of protest and rebellion?
Poor Nancy! The tragedy of her whole case was now none other than that she hadn't, here at five years old in March Square, the slightest picture of what she had become, nor could she, I suppose, have imagined it possible for her to become anything different.

Nancy, in her own real and naked person, was a small child with a good flow of flaxen hair and light-blue eyes.