It had been understood from the very beginning that Nancy was not of her father's world.

He would have been scarcely aware that he had a daughter had he not, at certain periods, paid bills for her clothes.
"What's a child want with all this ?" he had ventured once to say.
"Hardly your business, my dear," his wife had told him.

"The child's clothes are marvellously cheap considering.

I don't know how Florice does it for the money." He resented nothing--it was not his way--but he did feel, deep down in his heart, that the child was over-dressed, that it must be bad for any little girl to be praised in the way that his daughter was praised, that "the kid will grow up with the most tremendous ideas." He resented it, perhaps a little, that his young daughter had so easily accustomed herself to the thought that she had no father.

"She might just want to see me occasionally.