She had thought of her father as "all horrid"-- now his very contrast to her little world pleased and interested her.

It may also be that, although she was young, she had even now a picture in her mind of her father's loneliness.

She may have seen into her mother's attitude with an acuteness much older than her actual years.
She thought now continually about her father.

She made little plans to meet him, but these meetings were not, as a rule, successful, because so often he was down in the city.

She would wait at the end of her afternoon walk on the stairs.
"Come along, Miss Nancy, do.