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moments when she didn’t have to listen to her mother’s harangues about where their next meal would come from, Florence Evelyn began to formulate a particularly whimsical but surprisingly durable fantasy life; she retreated into a snug and resilient soap bubble, whose transparent membrane allowed a view of the outside world, but at the same time refused to allow anyone or anything to burst it. The more her mother dragged her into the harsh light of stinging reality (eerily silent one moment, then wailing about the poorhouse and unmarked graves in some potter’s field the next), the more Florence Evelyn retreated into her bubble. Her coping mechanism was to assume a dark-browed Irish silence as she honed her inherent knack for inhabiting two worlds simultaneously. Alternating between an almost too mature and matter-of-fact acceptance of a day’s discouraging or disastrous events and the ability to escape at night into an admittedly adolescent but far more satisfying romantic fantasy world, a young Florence Evelyn would come to realize that even though dreaming was free, it could carry a great price.
    Of course, Mrs. Nesbit’s dilemma was certainly real and dire. Being a widow with two children approaching adolescence, no visible means of support, no social or public programs to offer assistance, a depressed and unstable economy, and no training of any kind that might be considered a profession, she didn’t know where to turn. Nearly choking on the crumbs of her undigested pride, Mrs. Nesbit dropped her stoic pose one day and decided to ask for charity—from strangers—specifically, from Mrs. Mary Copely Thaw.
    Mrs. Thaw was the granite-willed widow of one of Pittsburgh’s wealthiest men and a prominent figure in her own not-so-small right. Mordantly overstuffed with good Christian works and self-righteousness, Mrs. Thaw modeled herself on England’s Queen Victoria, whom she resembled (except that Mrs. Thaw was significantly taller). To that end, she wore only widow’s weeds in public, as if in mourning for her life. Or the sins of others.
    As Evelyn describes it, the Nesbits were living only a few long blocks from the hulking shadow of the Thaw family mansion. Named Lyndhurst, it was a menacing, medieval-styled structure newly built on Beechwood Boulevard, disguised as time-honored by a thin, spotty raw beard of freshly grown ivy. Mrs. Thaw, a devout Presbyterian, spent most of her time and a small part of her dead husband’s immense fortune doing minor philanthropic work. She was known locally to give token amounts of money to needy families, which had prompted Mrs. Nesbit’s dismal decision.
    But, much to Mrs. Nesbit’s shock and chagrin, when she steeled her nerve and rang the bell of the intimidating Lyndhurst to ask for a hand-out, she was rudely turned away by a gray-gloved servant, without ceremony or explanation. The humiliated woman practically tripped down the steps of Lyndhurst and returned to the boardinghouse. She did not tell her children about the incident, but as time passed, Mrs. Winfield Nesbit would never forget or forgive her mortifying affront on the doorstep of the high-and-mighty icy Thaws.
    Florence Evelyn was aware that she had always sought her father’s guidance, opinion, and approval much more than her mother’s, whose energies had been directed toward the excruciatingly shy Howard. But the girl also recognized in an unconscious way that the cruel upheaval caused by her father’s sudden exit tied her more closely to her mother, partly out of necessity, partly out of separation anxiety, and of course, one supposes, out of love. Most of the time, the girl felt sorry for her mother, and regretted when her own natural stubbornness caused her easily dismayed mamma additional stress.
    But Florence Evelyn was fast approaching a new stage in her young and vulnerable life. She noticed how people, men and women alike, invariably responded to her with smiles and kind words (unlike her mother).