o, No, Nancy

aron Von Lodge was the head of a small country known as Lilliland near Switzerland. The time was the early 1900s.

The Baron had been engaged to Lady Angela of Alpine Castle for some time. Lady Angela would often wish that her dear friend Nancy Stewart would come to visit her in Lilliland. When Nancy Stewart would visit she would stay at Alpine Castle as the guest of Lady Angela. They met one summer when Lady Angela, as a young woman, was traveling in Scotland. Since then they visited each other often and would write letters to each other on a regular basis.

The letters from Nancy Stewart would almost always be the same. She would meet a new boyfriend and they would go together for a while, then the boyfriend would meet another girl and stop the relationship with Nancy.

Lady Angela shared the letters with the Baron to a point. The letters were confidential but Lady Angela wanted some advice from a man’s point of view that might help her friend Nancy Stewart. The Baron had met Nancy on several occasions and felt that she was attractive, intelligent, interesting and could easily attract as many men as she wished. The Baron felt that there was nothing wrong with Nancy. But, Lady Angela would say that none of her past boyfriends knew each other and the relationships all ended up the same. There must be something that Nancy Stewart was doing to discourage them. The Baron knew that Nancy would be visiting Lilliland the next month and that a famous Viennese psychiatrist, who was a dear friend of the Baron’s, would also be in Lilliland at the same time. Perhaps the doctor would have a discussion with Nancy Stewart. It would be an informal luncheon meeting in the castle gardens. The Baron and Lady Angela would walk around the gardens while the psychiatrist and Nancy did the same. Before the luncheon Nancy confessed to Lady Angela that she was calling herself “No, No, Nancy” because of all her broken relationships with men.

After the meeting, the doctor told the Baron that he could find nothing wrong with the young lady and that she was a lovely person. But one thing he noticed; she walked around the castle gardens so fast that he had trouble keeping up with her, so the meeting was concluded in a very short time.

The Baron and Lady Angela agreed that perhaps she walked so fast with her boyfriends that they just gave up because she was always too many steps ahead to have a meaningful relationship. The boyfriends must have all let her keep walking ahead all by herself.