Munty Ross—­a silent, ugly, black little man—­had had made his money in potted shrimps, or something equally compact and indigestible, and it really was very nice to think that anything in time could blossom out into beauty as striking as Mrs. Munty’s lovely dresses, or melody as wonderful as the voice of M. Radiziwill, the famous tenor, whom she often “turned on” at her little evening parties.  Upon Mr. Munty alone the shrimps seemed to have made no effect.  He was as black, as insignificant, as ugly as ever he had been in the days before he knew of a shrimp’s possibilities.  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.  All her features were small and delicate, and she gave you the impression that if you only pulled a string or pushed a button somewhere in the middle of her back you could evoke any cry, smile or exclamation that you cared to arouse.  Her eyes were old and weary, her attitude always that of one who had learnt the ways of this world, had found them sawdust, but had nevertheless consented still to play the game.  Just as the house was filled with little gilt chairs and china cockatoos, so was Nancy arrayed in ribbons and bows and lace.  Mrs. Munty had, one must suppose, surveyed during certain periods in her life certain real emotions rather as the gaping villagers survey the tiger behind his bars in the travelling circus.

The time had then come when she put these emotions away from her as childish things, and determined never to be faced with any of them again.  It was not likely, then, that she would introduce Nancy to any of them.  She introduced Nancy to clothes and deportment, and left it at that.  She wanted her child to “look nice.”  She was able, now that Nancy was five years old, to say that she “looked very nice indeed.”