Her reaction to Mrs. MacGregor really pushed her forward.  She knew that the woman could never overcome a secret sense of amaze that such a person as herself should be a member of Chadwick Champneys’s family—­the man was a gentleman, you see.  And she called Nancy “Anne.”  Her lifted eyebrows at Nancy’s English, her shocked, patient, parrot-like, “Not ‘seen him when he done it,’ please.  You saw him when he did it!—­No, ‘I come in the house’ isn’t correct.  Try to remember that well-bred persons use the past tense of the verb; thus:  ’I came into the house.’—­What do I hear, Anne?  You ’taken’ it?  No!  You TOOK it!” And she would look at Nancy like a scandalized martyr, ready to die for the noble cause of English grammar!  Rather than endure that look, rather than face those uplifted eyebrows, Nancy, gritting her teeth, set herself seriously to the task of making over her method of speech.

It was Mrs. MacGregor who, discovering the girl’s unstinted allowance of candy, cut off the supply.  She didn’t care much for candies herself, but she did like fruit, and fruit was substituted for the forbidden sweets.  She had the healthy, wholesome English habit of walking, and unless the weather was impossible she forced her unwilling charge to take long tramps with her, generally immediately after breakfast.  They would set out, Nancy dressed in a plain blue serge, her pretty, high-heeled pumps discarded for flat-heeled walking-shoes, Mrs. MacGregor flat-footed also, tall, bony, in a singular bonnet, but nevertheless retaining an inherent stateliness which won respect.  Sometimes they tramped up Riverside Drive, their objective being Grant’s tomb.  Mrs. MacGregor respected Grant; and the stands of dusty flags brought certain old British shrines to her mind.  On stated mornings they visited the Library, while Mrs. MacGregor selected the books Nancy was to read, books that Nancy looked at askance.  They had their mornings for the museums, too.  Mrs. MacGregor knew nothing of art, except that, as she said to Nancy, well-bred persons simply had to know something about it.  After their walk came lessons, grueling, dry-as-dust, nose-to-the-grindstone lessons, during which Nancy’s speech was vivisected.  At two o’clock they lunched, and Nancy had further critical instructions.  The dishes she had once been allowed to order were changed, greatly to her annoyance; Mrs. MacGregor liked such honest stuff as mutton chops and potatoes, just as she insisted upon oatmeal for breakfast.  Porridge, she called it.  In the afternoon they motored; Mrs. MacGregor, who detested speed, became the bane of the hard-faced chauffeur’s life.

They dined at seven, and for an hour thereafter Mrs. MacGregor either read aloud from some book intended to edify the young person, or forced Nancy to do so.  She was possibly the only person alive who delighted in Hannah More.  She said, modestly, that at an early age she had been taught to revere this paragon, and whatever happy knowledge of the virtues proper to the female state she possessed, she owed in a large measure to that model writer.  Nancy conceived for Hannah More a hatred equaled in intensity only by that cherished for Mrs. MacGregor herself.