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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Getting of Wisdom
+by Henry Handel Richardson
+(#2 in our series by Henry Handel Richardson)
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+Title: The Getting of Wisdom
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+Author: Henry Handel Richardson
+
+Release Date: February, 2003  [Etext #3728]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Getting of Wisdom
+by Henry Handel Richardson
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+Produced by Col Choat.
+
+
+
+
+
+The Getting of Wisdom by Henry Handel Richardson
+
+
+
+TO MY
+UNNAMED
+LITTLE COLLABORATOR
+
+
+
+Wisdom is the principal thing;
+therefore get wisdom: and with
+all thy getting get understanding.
+
+Proverbs, iv, 7
+
+
+
+I.
+
+
+
+The four children were lying on the grass.
+
+". . . and the Prince went further and further into the forest," said
+the elder girl, "till he came to a beautiful glade--a glade, you know,
+is a place in the forest that is open and green and lovely. And there he
+saw a lady, a beautiful lady, in a long white dress that hung down to
+her ankles, with a golden belt and a golden crown. She was lying on the
+sward--a sward, you know, is grass as smooth as velvet, just like green
+velvet--and the Prince saw the marks of travel on her garments. The
+bottom of the lovely silk dress was all dirty----"
+
+"Wondrous Fair, if you don't mind you'll make that sheet dirty, too,"
+said Pin.
+
+"Shut up, will you!" answered her sister who, carried away by her
+narrative, had approached her boots to some linen that was bleaching.
+
+"Yes, but you know Sarah'll be awfly cross if she has to wash it again,"
+said Pin, who was practical.
+
+"You'll put me out altogether," cried Laura angrily.--"Well, as I said,
+the edge of her robe was all muddy--no, I don't think I will say that;
+it sounds prettier if it's clean. So it hung in long, straight beautiful
+folds to her ankles, and the Prince saw two little feet in golden
+sandals peeping out from under the hem of the silken gown, and----"
+
+"But what about the marks of travel?" asked Leppie.
+
+"Donkey! haven't I said they weren't there? If I say they weren't,
+then they weren't. She hadn't travelled at all."
+
+"Oh, parrakeets!" cried little Frank.
+
+Four pairs of eyes went up to the bright green flock that was passing
+over the garden.
+
+"Now you've all interrupted, and I shan't tell any more," said Laura in
+a proud voice.
+
+"Oh, yes, please do, Wondrous Fair! Tell what happened next," begged Pin
+and Leppie.
+
+"No, not another word. You can only think of sheets and parrakeets."
+
+"Please, Wondrous Fair," begged little Frank.
+
+"No, I can't now.--Another thing: I don't mind if you call me Laura
+to-day, as it's the last day."
+
+She lay back on the grass, her hands clasped under her head. A voice was
+heard, loud, imperative.
+
+"Laura, I want you. Come here."
+
+"That's mother calling," said Pin.
+
+Laura kicked her heels. The two little boys laughed approval.
+
+"Go on, Laura," coaxed Pin. "Mother'll be angry. I'll come, too."
+
+Laura raised herself with a grumble. "It's to try on that horrid dress."
+
+In very fact Mother was standing, already somewhat impatient, with the
+dress in her hand. Laura wriggled out of the one she had on, and stood
+stiffly and ungraciously, with her arms held like pokers from her sides,
+while Mother on her knees arranged the length.
+
+"Don't put on a face like that, miss!" she said sharply on seeing
+Laura's air. "Do you think I'm making it for my own pleasure?" She
+had sewn at it all day, and was hot and tired.
+
+"It's too short," said Laura, looking down.
+
+"It's nothing of the kind," said Mother, with her mouth full of pins.
+
+"It is, it's much too short."
+
+Mother gave her a slight shake. "Don't you contradict ME! Do you want to
+tell me I don't know what length you're to wear your dresses?"
+
+"I won't wear it at all if you don't make it longer," said Laura
+defiantly.
+
+Pin's chubby, featureless little face lengthened with apprehension.
+
+"Do let her have it just a tiny bit longer, mother dear, dear!" she
+pleaded.
+
+"Now, Pin, what have you got to do with it I'd like to know!" said
+Mother, on the verge of losing her temper over the back folds, which
+WOULD not hang.
+
+"I'm going to school to-morrow, and it's a shame," said Laura in the
+low, passionate tone that never failed to exasperate Mother, so
+different was it from her own hearty fashion of venting displeasure. Pin
+began to sniff, in sheer nervous anxiety.
+
+"Very well then, I won't do another stitch to it!" and Mother, now angry
+in earnest, got up and bounced out of the room.
+
+"Laura, how can you?" said Pin, dissolving. "It's only you who make her
+so cross."
+
+"I don't care," said Laura rebelliously, though she was not far off
+tears herself. "It IS a shame. All the other girls will have dresses down
+to the tops of their boots, and they'll laugh at me, and call me a [P.4]
+baby;" and touched by the thought of what lay before her, she, too,
+began to sniffle. She did not fail, however, to roll the dress up and to
+throw it unto a corner of the room. She also kicked the ewer, which fell
+over and flooded the floor. Pin cried more loudly, and ran to fetch
+Sarah.
+
+Laura returned to the garden. The two little boys came up to her; but
+she waved them back.
+
+"Let me alone, children. I want to think."
+
+She stood in a becoming attitude by the garden-gate, her brothers
+hovering in the background.--Then Mother called once more.
+
+"Laura, where are you?"
+
+"Here, mother. What is it?"
+
+"Did you knock this jug over or did Pin?"
+
+"I did, mother."
+
+"Did you do it on purpose?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Come here to me."
+
+She went, with lagging steps. But Mother's anger had passed: she was at
+work on the dress again, and by squinting her eyes Laura could see that
+a piece was being added to the skirt. She was penitent at once; and when
+Mother in a sorry voice said: "I'm ashamed of you, Laura. And on your
+last day, too," her throat grew narrow.
+
+"I didn't mean it, mother."
+
+"If only you would ask properly for things, you would get them."
+
+Laura knew this; knew indeed that, did she coax, Mother could refuse her
+nothing. But coaxing came hard to her; something within her forbade it.
+Sarah called her "high-stomached", to the delight of the other
+children and her own indignation; she had explained to them again and
+again what Sarah really meant.
+
+On leaving the house she went straight to the flower-beds: she would
+give Mother, who liked flowers very well but had no time to gather them,
+a bouquet the size of a cabbage. Pin and the boys were summoned to help
+her, and when their hands were full, Laura led the way to a secluded
+part of the garden on the farther side of the detached brick kitchen. In
+this strip, which was filled with greenery, little sun fell: two thick
+fir trees and a monstrous blue-gum stood there; high bushes screened the
+fence; jessamine climbed the wall of the house and encircled the bedroom
+windows; and on the damp and shady ground only violets grew. Yet, with
+the love children bear to the limited and compact, the four had chosen
+their own little plots here rather than in the big garden at the back of
+the house; and many were the times they had all begun anew to dig and to
+rake. But if Laura's energy did not fizzle out as quickly as usual--she
+was the model for the rest--Mother was sure to discover that it was too
+cramped and dark for them in there, and send Sarah to drive them off.
+
+Here, safely screened from sight, Laura sat on a bench and made up her
+bouquet. When it was finished--red and white in the centre with a
+darker border, the whole surrounded by a ring of violet leaves--she
+looked about for something to tie it up with. Sarah, applied to, was
+busy ironing, and had no string in the kitchen, so Pin ran to get a reel
+of cotton. But while she was away Laura had an idea. Bidding Leppie hold
+the flowers tight in both his sticky little hands, she climbed in
+at her bedroom window, or rather, by lying on the sill with her legs
+waving in the air, she managed to grab, without losing her balance, a
+pair of scissors from the chest of drawers. With these between her teeth
+she emerged, to the excited interest of the boys who watched her
+open-mouthed.
+
+Laura had dark curls, Pin fair, and both wore them flapping at their
+backs, the only difference being that Laura, who was now twelve years
+old, had for the past year been allowed to bind hers together with a
+ribbon, while Pin's bobbed as they chose. Every morning early, Mother
+brushed and twisted, with a kind of grim pride, these silky ringlets
+round her finger. Although the five odd minutes the curling occupied
+were durance vile to Laura, the child was proud of her hair in her own
+way; and when in the street she heard some one say: "Look--what pretty
+curls!" she would give her head a toss and send them all a-rippling. In
+addition to this, there was a crowning glory connected with them: one
+hot December morning, when they had been tangled and Mother had kept her
+standing too long, she had fainted, pulling the whole dressing-table
+down about her ears; and ever since, she had been marked off in some
+mysterious fashion from the other children. Mother would not let her go
+out at midday in summer: Sarah would say: "Let that be, can't you!" did
+she try to lift something that was too heavy for her; and the younger
+children were to be quelled by a threat to faint on the spot, if they
+did not do as she wished. "Laura's faint" had become a byword in the
+family; and Laura herself held it for so important a fact in her
+life that she had more than once begun a friendship with the words: "Have
+you ever fainted? I have."
+
+From among these long, glossy curls, she now cut one of the longest and
+most spiral, cut it off close to the root, and with it bound the flowers
+together. Mother should see that she did know how to give up something
+she cared for, and was not as selfish as she was usually supposed to be.
+
+"Oh . . h . . h!" said both little boys in a breath, then doubled up in
+noisy mirth. Laura was constantly doing something to set their young
+blood in amazement: they looked upon her as the personification of all
+that was startling and unexpected. But Pin, returning with the reel of
+thread, opened her eyes in a different way.
+
+"Oh, Laura . . .!" she began, tearful at once.
+
+"Now, res'vor!" retorted Laura scornfully--"res'vor" was Sarah's name
+for Pin, on account of her perpetual wateriness. "Be a cry-baby, do."
+But she was not damped, she was lost in the pleasure of self-sacrifice.
+
+Pin looked after her as she danced off, then moved submissively in her
+wake to be near at hand should intercession be needed. Laura was so
+unsuspecting, and Mother would be so cross. In her dim, childish way Pin
+longed to see these, her two nearest, at peace; she understood them both
+so well, and they had little or no understanding for each other.--So
+she crept to the house at her sister's heels.
+
+Laura did not go indoors; hiding against the wall of the flagged
+verandah, she threw her bouquet in at the window, meaning it to
+fall on Mother's lap.
+
+But Mother had dropped her needle, and was just lifting her face,
+flushed with stooping, when the flowers hit her a thwack on the head.
+She groped again, impatiently, to find what had struck her, recognised
+the peace-offering, and thought of the surprise cake that was to go into
+Laura's box on the morrow. Then she saw the curl, and her face darkened.
+Was there ever such a tiresome child? What in all the world would she do
+next?
+
+"Laura, come here, directly!"
+
+Laura had moved away; she was not expecting recognition. If Mother were
+pleased she would call Pin to put the flowers in water for her, and that
+would be the end of it. The idea of a word of thanks would have made
+Laura feel uncomfortable. Now, however, at the tone of Mother's voice,
+her mouth set stubbornly. She went indoors as bidden, but was already up
+in arms again.
+
+"You're a very naughty girl indeed!" began Mother as soon she
+appeared. "How dare you cut off your hair? Upon my word, if it weren't
+your last night I'd send you to bed without any supper!"--an unheard-of
+threat on the part of Mother, who punished her children in any way but
+that of denying them their food. "It's a very good thing you're leaving
+home to-morrow, for you'd soon be setting the others at defiance, too,
+and I should have four naughty children on my hands instead of one.--
+But I'd be ashamed to go to school such a fright if I were you. Turn
+round at once and let me see you!"
+
+Laura turned, with a sinking heart. Pin cried softly in a corner.
+
+"She thought it would please you, mother," she sobbed.
+
+"I WILL not have you interfering, Pin, when I'm speaking to Laura. She's
+old enough by now to know what I like and what I don't," said Mother,
+who was vexed at the thought of the child going among strangers thus
+disfigured.--"And now get away, and don't let me see you again. You're a
+perfect sight."
+
+"Oh, Laura, you do look funny!" said Leppie and Frank in weak chorus, as
+she passed them in the passage.
+
+"Well, you 'ave made a guy of yourself this time, Miss Laura, and no
+mistake!" said Sarah, who had heard the above.
+
+Laura went into her own room and locked the door, a thing Mother did not
+allow. Then she threw herself on the bed and cried. Mother had not
+understood in the least; and she had made herself a sight into the
+bargain. She refused to open the door, though one after another rattled
+the handle, and Sarah threatened to turn the hose in at the window. So
+they left her alone, and she spent the evening in watery dudgeon on her
+pillow. But before she undressed for the night she stealthily made a
+chink and took in the slice of cake Pin had left on the door-mat. Her
+natural buoyancy of spirit was beginning to reassert itself. By brushing
+her hair well to one side she could cover up the gap, she found; and
+after all, there was something rather pleasant in knowing that you were
+misunderstood. It made you feel different from everyone else.
+
+Mother--sewing hard after even the busy Sarah had retired--
+Mother smiled a stern little smile of amusement to herself; and before
+locking up for the night put the dark curl safely away. 
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+
+
+Laura, sleeping flat on her stomach, was roused next morning by Pin who
+said:
+
+"Wake up, Wondrous Fair, mother wants to speak to you. She says you can
+get into bed in my place, before you dress." Pin slept warm and cosy at
+Mother's side.
+
+Laura rose on her elbow and looked at her sister: Pin was standing in
+the doorway holding her nightgown to her, in such a way as to expose all
+of her thin little legs.
+
+"Come on," urged Pin. "Sarah's going to give me my bath while you're with
+mother."
+
+"Go away, Pin," said Laura snappily. "I told you yesterday you could say
+Laura, and . . . and you're more like a spider than ever."
+
+"Spider" was another nickname for Pin, owed to her rotund little body
+and mere sticks of legs--she was "all belly" as Sarah put it--and the
+mere mention of it made Pin fly; for she was very touchy about her legs.
+
+As soon as the door closed behind her, Laura sprang out of bed and,
+waiting neither to wash herself nor to say her prayers, began to pull on
+her clothes, confusing strings and buttons in her haste, and quite
+forgetting that on this eventful morning she had meant to dress herself
+with more than ordinary care. She was just lacing her shoes when Sarah
+looked in.
+
+"Why, Miss Laura, don't you know your ma wants you?"
+
+"It's too late. I'm dressed now," said Laura darkly.
+
+Sarah shook her head. "Missis'll be fine an' angry. An' you needn't 'ave
+'ad a row on your last day."
+
+Laura stole out of the door and ran down the garden to the summer-house.
+This, the size of a goodly room, was formed of a single dense,
+hairy-leafed tree, round the trunk of which a seat was built. Here she
+cowered, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands. Her face wore
+the stiff expression that went by the name of "Laura's sulks," but her
+eyes were big, and as watchful as those of a scared animal. If Sarah
+came to fetch her she would hold on to the seat with both hands. But
+even if she had to yield to Sarah's greater strength--well, at least
+she was up and dressed. Not like the last time--about a week ago Mother
+had tried this kind of thing. Then, she had been caught unawares. She
+had gone into Pin's warm place, curious and unsuspecting, and thereupon
+Mother had begun to talk seriously to her, and not with her usual
+directness. She had reminded Laura that she was growing up apace and
+would soon be a woman; had told her that she must now begin to give up
+childish habits, and learn to behave in a modest and womanly way--all
+disagreeable, disturbing things, which Laura did not in the least want
+to hear. When it became clear to her what it was about, she had thrown
+back the bedclothes and escaped from the room. And since then she had
+been careful never to be long alone with Mother.
+
+But now half an hour went by and no one came to fetch her: her
+grim little face relaxed. She felt very hungry, too, and when at length
+she heard Pin calling, she jumped up and betrayed her hiding-place.
+
+"Laura! Laura, where are you? Mother says to come to breakfast and not
+be silly. The coach'll be here in an hour."
+
+Taking hands the sisters ran to the house.
+
+In the passage, Sarah was busy roping a battered tin box. With their own
+hands the little boys had been allowed to paste on this a big sheet of
+notepaper, which bore, in Mother's writing, the words:
+
+Miss Laura Tweedle Rambotham The Ladies' College Melbourne.
+
+Mother herself was standing at the breakfast-table cutting sandwiches.
+
+"Come and eat your breakfast, child," was all she said at the
+moment. "The tea's quite cold."
+
+Laura sat down and fell to with appetite, but also with a side-glance at
+the generous pile of bread and meat growing under Mother's hands.
+
+"I shall never eat all that," she said ungraciously; it galled her still
+to be considered a greedy child with an insatiable stomach.
+
+"I know better than you do what you'll eat," said Mother. "You'll be
+hungry enough by this evening I can tell you, not getting any dinner."
+
+Pin's face fell at this prospect. "Oh, mother, won't she really get any
+dinner?" she asked: and to her soft little heart going to school began
+to seem one of the blackest experiences life held.
+
+"Why, she'll be in the train, stupid, 'ow can she?" said Sarah. "Do you
+think trains give you dinners?"
+
+"Oh, mother, please cut ever such a lot!" begged Pin sniffing valiantly.
+
+Laura began to feel somewhat moved herself at this solicitude, and
+choked down a lump in her throat with a gulp of tea. But when Pin had
+gone with Sarah to pick some nectarines, Mother's face grew stern, and
+Laura's emotion passed.
+
+"I feel more troubled about you than I can say, Laura. I don't know how
+you'll ever get on in life--you're so disobedient and self-willed. It
+would serve you very well right, I'm sure, for not coming this morning,
+if I didn't give you a penny of pocket-money to take to school."
+
+Laura had heard this threat before, and thought it wiser not to reply.
+Gobbling up the rest of her breakfast she slipped away.
+
+With the other children at her heels she made a round of the garden,
+bidding good-bye to things and places. There were the two summer-houses
+in which she had played house; in which she had cooked and eaten and
+slept. There was the tall fir-tree with the rung-like branches by which
+she had been accustomed to climb to the very tree-top; there was the
+wilderness of bamboo and cane where she had been Crusoe; the ancient,
+broadleaved cactus on which she had scratched their names and drawn
+their portraits; here, the high aloe that had such a mysterious charm
+for you, because you never knew when the hundred years might expire and
+the aloe burst into flower. Here again was the old fig tree with the
+rounded, polished boughs, from which, seated as in a cradle, she
+had played Juliet to Pin's Romeo, and vice versa--but oftenest Juliet:
+for though Laura greatly preferred to be the ardent lover at the foot,
+Pin was but a poor climber, and, as she clung trembling to her branch,
+needed so much prompting in her lines--even then to repeat them with
+such feeble emphasis--that Laura invariably lost patience with her and
+the love-scene ended in a squabble. Passing behind a wooden fence which
+was a tangle of passion-flower, she opened the door of the fowl-house,
+and out strutted the mother-hen followed by her pretty brood. Laura had
+given each of the chicks a name, and she now took Napoleon and Garibaldi
+up in her hand and laid her cheek against their downy breasts, the
+younger children following her movements in respectful silence. Between
+the bars of the rabbit hutch she thrust enough greenstuff to last the
+two little occupants for days; and everywhere she went she was
+accompanied by a legless magpie, which, in spite of its infirmity,
+hopped cheerily and quickly on its stumps. Laura had rescued it and
+reared it; it followed her like a dog; and she was only less devoted to
+it than she had been to a native bear which died under her hands.
+
+"Now listen, children," she said as she rose from her knees before the
+hutch. "If you don't look well after Maggy and the bunnies, I don't know
+what I'll do. The chicks'll be all right. Sarah'll take care of them,
+'cause of the eggs. But Maggy and the bunnies don't have eggs, and if
+they're not fed, or if Frank treads on Maggy again, then they'll die.
+Now if you let them die, I don't know what I'll do to you! Yes, I
+do: I'll send the devil to you at night when the room's dark, before you
+go to sleep.--So there!"
+
+"How can you if you're not here?" asked Leppie.
+
+Pin, however, who believed in ghosts and apparitions with all her
+fearful little heart, promised tremulously never, never to forget; but
+Laura was not satisfied until each of them in turn had repeated, in a
+low voice, with the appropriate gestures, the sacred secret, and
+forbidden formula: 
+
+
+Is my finger wet?
+Is my finger dry?
+God'll strike me dead,
+If I tell a lie.
+
+
+Then Sarah's voice was heard calling, and the boys went out into the
+road to watch for the coach. Laura's dressing proved a lengthy business,
+and was accomplished amid bustle, and scolding, and little peace-making
+words from Pin; for in her hurry that morning Laura had forgotten to put
+on the clean linen Mother had laid beside the bed, and consequently had
+now to strip to the skin.
+
+The boys announced the coming of the coach with shrill cries, and
+simultaneously the rumble of wheels was heard. Sarah came from the
+kitchen drying her hands, and Pin began to cry.
+
+"Now, shut up, res'vor!" said Sarah roughly: her own eyes were
+moist. "You don't see Miss Laura be such a silly-billy. Anyone 'ud think
+you was goin', not 'er."
+
+The ramshackle old vehicle, one of Cobb's Royal Mail Coaches,
+big-bodied, lumbering, scarlet, pulled by two stout horses, drew
+up before the door, and the driver climbed down from his seat.
+
+"Now good day to you, ma'am, good day, miss"--this to Sarah who,
+picking up the box, handed it to him to be strapped on under the
+apron. "Well, well, and so the little girl's goin' to school, is she? My,
+but time flies! Well do I remember the day ma'am, when I drove you all
+across for the first time. These children wasn't big enough then to git
+up and down be thimselves. Now I warrant you they can--just look at
+'em, will you?--But my! Ain't you ashamed of yourself"--he spoke to
+Pin--"pipin' your eye like that? Why, you'll flood the road if you don't
+hould on.--Yes, yes, ma'am, bless you, I'll look after her, and put her
+inter the train wid me own han's. Don't you be oneasy. The Lord he cares
+for the widder and the orphun, and if He don't, why Patrick O'Donnell
+does."
+
+This was O'Donnell's standing joke; he uttered it with a loud chuckle.
+While speaking he had let down the steps and helped the three children
+up--they were to ride with Laura to the outskirts of the township. The
+little boys giggled excitedly at his assertion that the horses would not
+be equal to the weight. Only Pin wept on, in undiminished grief.
+
+"Now, Miss Laura."
+
+"Now, Laura. Good-bye, darling. And do try and be good. And be sure you
+write once a week. And tell me everything. Whether you are happy--and
+if you get enough to eat--and if you have enough blankets on your bed.
+And remember always to change your boots if you get your feet wet. And
+don't lean out of the window in the train."
+
+For some time past Laura had had need of all her self-control,
+not to cry before the children. As the hour drew near it had grown
+harder and harder; while dressing, she had resorted to counting the
+number of times the profile of a Roman emperor appeared in the flowers
+on the wallpaper. Now the worst moment of all was come--the moment of
+good-bye. She did not look at Pin, but she heard her tireless, snuffly
+weeping, and set her own lips tight.
+
+"Yes, mother . . . no, mother," she answered shortly, "I'll be all right.
+Good-bye." She could not, however, restrain a kind of dry sob, which
+jumped up her throat.
+
+When she was in the coach Sarah, whom she had forgotten climbed up to
+kiss her; and there was some joking between O'Donnell and the servant
+while the steps were being folded and put away. Laura did not smile; her
+thin little face was very pale. Mother's heart went out to her in a pity
+which she did not know how to express.
+
+"Don't forget your sandwiches. And when you're alone, feel in the pocket
+of your ulster and you'll find something nice. Good-bye, darling."
+
+"Good-bye . . . good-bye."
+
+The driver had mounted to his seat, he unwound the reins cried "Get up!"
+to the two burly horses, the vehicle was set in motion and trundled down
+the main street. Until it turned the corner by the Shire Gardens, Laura
+let her handkerchief fly from the window. Sarah waved hers; then wiped
+her eyes and lustily blew her nose. Mother only sighed.
+
+"It was all she could do to keep up," she said as much to herself
+as to Sarah. "I do hope she'll be all right. She seems such a child to be
+sending off like this. Yet what else could I do? To a State School, I've
+always said it, my children shall never go--not if I have to beg the
+money to send them elsewhere."
+
+But she sighed again, in spite of the energy of her words, and stood
+gazing at the place where the coach had disappeared. She was still a
+comparatively young woman, and straight of body; but trouble, poverty
+and night-watches had scored many lines on her forehead.
+
+"Don't you worry," said Sarah. "Miss Laura'll be all right. She's just a
+bit too clever--brains for two, that's what it is. An' children WILL
+grow up an' get big . . . an' change their feathers." She spoke
+absently, drawing her metaphor from a brood of chickens which had
+strayed across the road, and was now trying to mount the wooden verandah
+-"Shooh! Get away with you!"
+
+"I know that. But Laura--The other children have never given me a
+moment's worry. But Laura's different. I seem to get less and less able
+to manage her. If only her father had been alive to help!"
+
+"I'm sure no father livin' could do more than you for those blessed
+children," said Sarah with impatience. "You think of nothin' else. It 'ud
+be a great deal better if you took more care o' yourself. You sit up
+nights an' don't get no proper sleep slavin' away at that blessed
+embroid'ry an' stuff, so as Miss Laura can get off to school an' to 'er
+books. An' then you want to worry over 'er as well.--She'll be all
+right. Miss Laura's like peas. You've got to get 'em outer the
+pod--they're in there sure enough. An' b'sides I guess school'll knock
+all the nonsense out of 'er."
+
+"Oh, I hope they won't be too hard on her," said Mother in quick alarm.
+-"Shut the side gate, will you. Those children have left it open again.
+--And, Sarah, I think we'll turn out the drawing-room."
+
+Sarah grunted to herself as she went to close the gate. This had not
+entered into her scheme of work for the day, and her cooking was still
+undone. But she did not gainsay her mistress, as she otherwise would
+have made no scruple of doing; for she knew that nothing was more
+helpful to the latter in a crisis than hard, manual work. Besides, Sarah
+herself had a sneaking weakness for what she called "dra'in'-room days".
+For the drawing-room was the storehouse of what treasures had remained
+over from a past prosperity. It was crowded with bric-a-brac and
+ornament; and as her mistress took these objects up one by one, to dust
+and polish them, she would, if she were in a good humour, tell Sarah
+where and how they had been bought, or describe the places they had
+originally come from: so that Sarah, pausing broom in hand to listen,
+had with time gathered some vague ideas of a country like "Inja", for
+example, whence came the little silver "pagody", and the expressionless
+brass god who squatted vacantly and at ease. 
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+
+
+As long as the coach rolled down the main street Laura sat bolt upright
+at the window. In fancy she heard people telling one another that this
+was little Miss Rambotham going to school. She was particularly glad
+that just as they went past the Commercial Hotel, Miss Perrotet, the
+landlord's red-haired daughter, should put her fuzzy head out of the
+window--for Miss Perrotet had also been to boarding-school, and thought
+very highly of herself in consequence, though it had only been for a
+year, to finish. At the National Bank the manager's wife waved a
+friendly hand to the children, and at the Royal Mail Hotel where they
+drew up for passengers or commissions, Mrs. Paget, the stout landlady,
+came out, smoothing down her black satin apron.
+
+"Well, I'm sure I wonder your ma likes sendin' you off so alone."
+
+The ride had comforted Pin a little; but when they had passed the chief
+stores and the flour-mill, and were come to a part of the road where the
+houses were fewer, her tears broke out afresh. The very last house was
+left behind, the high machinery of the claims came into view, the watery
+flats where Chinamen were for ever rocking washdirt in cradles; and
+O'Donnell dismounted and opened the door. He lifted the three out one by
+one, shaking his head in humorous dismay at Pin, and as little Frank
+showed sighs of beginning, too, by puckering up his face and [P.22]
+doubling up his body, the kindly man tried to make them laugh by asking
+if he had the stomach-ache. Laura had one more glimpse of the children
+standing hand in hand--even in her trouble Pin did not forget her
+charges--then a sharp bend in the road hid them from her sight.
+
+She was alone in the capacious body of the coach, alone, and the proud
+excitement of parting was over. The staunchly repressed tears welled up
+with a gush, and flinging herself down across the seat she cried
+bitterly. It was not a childishly irresponsible grief like Pin's: it was
+more passionate, and went deeper; and her overloaded feelings were soon
+relieved. But as she was not used to crying, she missed the moment at
+which she might have checked herself, and went on shedding tears after
+they had become a luxury.
+
+"Why, goodness gracious, what's this?" cried a loud, cheerful and
+astonished voice, and a fat, rosy face beamed in on Laura. "Why, here's a
+little girl in here, cryin' fit to break 'er heart. Come, come, my dear,
+what's the matter? Don't cry like that, now don't."
+
+The coach had stopped, the door opened and a stout woman climbed in,
+bearing a big basket, and followed by a young man with straw-coloured
+whiskers. Laura sat up like a dart and pulled her hat straight, crimson
+with mortification at being discovered in such a plight. She had
+instantly curbed her tears, but she could not disguise the fact that she
+had red eyes and a swollen nose--that she was in short what Sarah
+called "all bunged up". She made no reply to the newcomer's exclamations,
+but sat clutching her handkerchief and staring out of the window.
+The woman's good-natured curiosity, however, was not to be done.
+
+"You poor little thing, you!" she persisted. "Wherever are you goin', my
+dear, so alone?"
+
+"I'm going to boarding-school," said Laura, and shot a glance at the
+couple opposite.
+
+"To boardin'-school? Peter! D'you hear?--Why, whatever's your ma
+thinkin' of to send such a little chick as you to boardin'-school? . . .
+and so alone, too."
+
+Laura's face took on a curious air of dignity.
+
+"I'm not so very little," she answered; and went on to explain, in
+phrases which she had heard so often that she knew them by heart: "Only
+small for my age. I was twelve in spring. And I have to go to school,
+because I've learnt all I can at home."
+
+This failed to impress the woman.
+
+"Snakes alive!--that's young enough in all conscience. And such a
+delicate little creature, too. Just like that one o' Sam MacFarlane's
+that popped off last Christmas--isn't she, Peter?"
+
+Peter, who avoided looking at Laura, sheepishly mumbled something about
+like enough she was.
+
+"And who IS your ma, my dear? What's your name?" continued her
+interrogator.
+
+Laura replied politely; but there was a reserve in her manner which,
+together with the name she gave, told enough: the widow, Laura's mother,
+had the reputation of being very "stuck-up", and of bringing up her
+children in the same way.
+
+The woman did not press Laura further; she whispered something behind
+her hand to Peter, then searching in her basket found a large, red
+apple, which she held out with an encouraging nod and smile.
+
+"Here, my dear. Here's something for you. Don't cry any more, don't now.
+It'll be all right."
+
+Laura, who was well aware that she had not shed a tear since the couple
+entered the coach, coloured deeply, and made a movement, half shy, half
+unwilling, to put her hands behind her.
+
+"Oh no, thank you," she said in extreme embarrassment, not wishing to
+hurt the giver's feelings. "Mother doesn't care for us to take things
+from strangers."
+
+"Bless her soul!" cried the stout woman in amaze. "It's only an apple!
+Now, my dear, just you take it, and make your mind easy. Your ma
+wouldn't have nothin' against it to-day, I'm sure o' that--goin' away
+so far and all so alone like this.--It's sweet and juicy."
+
+"It's Melb'm you'll be boun' for I dessay?" said the yellow-haired Peter
+so suddenly that Laura started.
+
+She confirmed this, and let her solemn eyes rest on him wondering why he
+was so red and fidgety and uncomfortable. The woman said: "Tch, tch,
+tch!" at the length of the journey Laura was undertaking, and Peter,
+growing still redder, volunteered another remark.
+
+"I was nigh to bein' in Melb'm once meself," he said.
+
+"Aye, and he can't never forget it, the silly loon," threw in the woman,
+but so good-naturedly that it was impossible, Laura felt, for Peter to
+take offence.
+
+She gazed at the pair, speculating upon the relation they stood
+in to each other. She had obediently put out her hand for the apple, and
+now sat holding it, without attempting to eat it. It had not been
+Mother's precepts alone that had weighed with her in declining it; she
+was mortified at the idea of being bribed, as it were, to be good, just
+as though she were Pin or one of the little boys. It was a punishment on
+her for having been so babyish as to cry; had she not been caught in the
+act, the woman would never have ventured to be so familiar.--The very
+largeness and rosiness of the fruit made it hateful to her, and she
+turned over in her mind how she could get rid of it.
+
+As the coach bumped along, her fellow-passengers sat back and shut their
+eyes. The road was shadeless; beneath the horses' feet a thick red dust
+rose like smoke. The grass by the wayside, under the scattered gum trees
+or round the big black boulders that dotted the hillocks, was burnt to
+straw. In time, Laura also grew drowsy, and she was just falling into a
+doze when, with a jerk, the coach pulled up at the "Halfway House." Here
+her companions alighted, and there were more nods and smiles from the
+woman.
+
+"You eat it, my dear. I'm sure your ma won't say nothin'," was her last
+remark as she pushed the swing-door and vanished into the house,
+followed by Peter.
+
+Then the driver's pleasant face appeared at the window of the coach. In
+one hand he held a glass, in the other a bottle of lemonade.
+
+"Here, little woman, have a drink. It's warm work ridin'."
+
+Now this was quite different from the matter of the apple. Laura's
+throat was parched with dust and tears. She accepted the offer
+gratefully, thinking as she drank how envious Pin would be, could she
+see her drinking bottle-lemonade.
+
+Then the jolting and rumbling began anew. No one else got in, and when
+they had passed the only two landmarks she knew--the leprous Chinaman's
+hut and the market garden of Ah Chow, who twice a week jaunted at a
+half-trot to the township with his hanging baskets, to supply people
+with vegetables--when they had passed these, Laura fell asleep. She
+wakened with a start to find that the coach had halted to apply the
+brakes, at the top of the precipitous hill that led down to the railway
+township. In a two-wheeled buggy this was an exciting descent; but the
+coach jammed on both its brakes, moved like a snail, and seemed hardly
+able to crawl.
+
+At the foot of the hill the little town lay sluggish in the sun.
+Although it was close on midday, but few people were astir in the
+streets; for the place had long since ceased to be an important mining
+centre: the chief claims were worked out; and the coming of the railway
+had been powerless to give it the impetus to a new life. It was always
+like this in these streets of low, verandahed, red-brick houses, always
+dull and sleepy, and such animation as there was, was invariably to be
+found before the doors of the many public-houses.
+
+At one of these the coach stopped and unloaded its goods, for an
+interminable time. People came and looked in at the window at Laura, and
+she was beginning to feel alarmed lest O'Donnell, who had gone inside,
+had forgotten all about her having to catch the train, when out he came,
+wiping his lips.
+
+"Now for the livin' luggage!" he said with a wink, and Laura drew
+back in confusion from the laughter of a group of larrikins round the
+door.
+
+It was indeed high time at the station; no sooner was her box dislodged
+and her ticket taken than the train steamed in. O'Donnell recommended
+her to the guard's care; she shook hands with him and thanked him, and
+had just been locked into a carriage by herself when he came running
+down the platform again, holding in his hand, for everyone to see, the
+apple, which Laura believed she had safely hidden under the cushions of
+the coach. Red to the roots of her hair she had to receive it before a
+number of heads put out to see what the matter was, and she was even
+forced to thank O'Donnell into the bargain. Then the guard came along
+once more, and told her he would let no one get in beside her: she need
+not be afraid.
+
+"Yes. And will you please tell me when we come to Melbourne."
+
+Directly the train was clear of the station, she lowered a window and,
+taking aim at a telegraph post, threw the apple from her with all her
+might. Then she hung out of the window, as far out as she could, till
+her hat was nearly carried off. This was the first railway journey she
+had made by herself, and there was an intoxicating sense of freedom in
+being locked in, alone, within the narrow compass of the compartment.
+She was at liberty to do everything that had previously been forbidden
+her: she walked up and down the carriage, jumped from one seat to
+another, then lay flat on her back singing to herself, and watching the
+telegraph poles fly past the windows, and the wires mount and
+descend.--But now came a station and, though the train did not stop,
+she sat up, in order that people might see she was travelling alone.
+
+She grew hungry and attacked her lunch, and it turned out that Mother
+had not provided too much after all. When she had finished, had brushed
+herself clean of crumbs and handled, till her finger-tips were sore, the
+pompous half-crown she had found in her pocket, she fell to thinking of
+them at home, and of what they would now be doing. It was between two
+and three o'clock: the sun would be full on the flagstones of the back
+verandah; inch by inch Pin and Leppie would be driven away to find a
+cooler spot for their afternoon game, while little Frank slept, and
+Sarah splashed the dinner-dishes in the brick-floored kitchen. Mother
+sat sewing, and she would still be sitting there, still sewing, when the
+shadow of the fir tree, which at noon was shrunken like a dwarf, had
+stretched to giant size, and the children had opened the front gate to
+play in the shade of the public footpath.--At the thought of these
+shadows, of all the familiar things she would not see again for months
+to come, Laura's eyelids began to smart.
+
+They had flashed through several stations; now they stopped; and her
+mind was diverted by the noise and bustle. As the train swung into
+motion again, she fell into a pleasanter line of thought. She painted to
+herself, for the hundredth time, the new life towards which she was
+journeying, and, as always, in the brightest colours.
+
+She had arrived at school, and in a spacious apartment, which was a kind
+of glorified Mother's drawing-room, was being introduced to a
+bevy of girls. They clustered round, urgent to make the acquaintance of
+the newcomer, who gave her hand to each with an easy grace and an
+appropriate word. They were too well-bred to cast a glance at her
+clothes, which, however she might embellish them in fancy, Laura knew
+were not what they ought to be: her ulster was some years old, and so
+short that it did not cover the flounce of her dress, and this dress,
+and her hat with it, were Mother's taste, and consequently, Laura felt
+sure, nobody else's. But her new companions saw that she wore these
+clothes with an elegance that made up for their shortcomings; and she
+heard them whisper: "Isn't she pretty? What black eyes! What lovely
+curls!" But she was not proud, and by her ladylike manners soon made
+them feel at home with her, even though they stood agape at her
+cleverness: none of THEM could claim to have absorbed the knowledge of a
+whole house. With one of her admirers she had soon formed a friendship
+that was the wonder of all who saw it: in deep respect the others drew
+back, forming a kind of allee, down which, with linked arms, the two
+friends sauntered, blind to everything but themselves.--And having
+embarked thus upon her sea of dreams, Laura set sail and was speedily
+borne away.
+
+"Next station you'll be there, little girl."
+
+She sprang up and looked about her, with vacant eyes. This had been the
+last stoppage, and the train was passing through the flats. In less than
+two minutes she had collected her belongings, tidied her hair and put on
+her gloves.
+
+Some time afterwards they steamed in alongside a gravelled
+platform, among the stones of which a few grass-blades grew. This was
+Melbourne. At the nearer end of the platform stood two ladies, one stout
+and elderly in bonnet and mantle, with glasses mounted on a black stick,
+and shortsighted, peering eyes; the other stout and comely, too, but
+young, with a fat, laughing face and rosy cheeks. Laura descried them a
+long way off; and, as the carriage swept past them, they also saw her,
+eager and prominent at her window. Both stared at her, and the younger
+lady said something, and laughed. Laura instantly connected the remark,
+and the amusement it caused the speaker, with the showy red lining of
+her hat, at which she believed their eyes had been directed. She also
+realised, when it was too late, that her greeting had been childish,
+unnecessarily effusive; for the ladies had responded only by nods. Here
+were two thrusts to parry at once, and Laura's cheeks tingled. But she
+did not cease to smile, and she was still wearing this weak little
+smile, which did its best to seem easy and unconcerned, when she
+alighted from the train. 
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+
+
+The elderly lady was Laura's godmother; she lived at Prahran, and it was
+at her house that Laura would sometimes spend a monthly holiday.
+Godmother was good to them all in a brusque, sharp-tongued fashion; but
+Pin was her especial favourite and she made no secret of it. Her
+companion on the platform was a cousin of Laura's, of at least twice
+Laura's age, who invariably struck awe into the children by her loud and
+ironic manner of speech. She was an independent, manly person, in spite
+of her plump roundnesses; she lived by herself in lodgings, and earned
+her own living as a clerk in an office.
+
+The first greetings over, Godmother's attention was entirely taken up by
+Laura's box: after this had been picked out from among the other
+luggage, grave doubts were expressed whether it could be got on to the
+back seat of the pony-carriage, to which it was conveyed by a porter and
+the boy. Laura stood shyly by and waited, while Cousin Grace kept up the
+conversation by putting abrupt and embarrassing questions.
+
+"How's your ma?" she demanded rather than asked, in the slangy and
+jocular tone she employed. "I guess she'll be thanking her stars she's
+got rid of you;" at which Laura smiled uncertainly, not being sure
+whether Cousin Grace spoke in jest or earnest.
+
+"I suppose you think no end of yourself going to boarding-school?"
+continued the latter.
+
+"Oh no, not at all," protested Laura with due modesty; and as
+both at question and answer Cousin Grace laughed boisterously, Laura was
+glad to hear Godmother calling: "Come, jump in. The ponies won't stand."
+
+Godmother was driving herself--a low basket-carriage, harnessed to two
+buff-coloured ponies. Laura sat with her back to them. Godmother flapped
+the reins and said: "Get up!" but she was still fretted about the box,
+which was being held on behind by the boy. An inch larger, she asserted,
+and it would have had to be left behind. Laura eyed its battered sides
+uneasily. Godmother might remember, she thought, that it contained her
+whole wardrobe; and she wondered how many of Godmother's own ample gowns
+could be compressed into so small a space.
+
+"All my clothes are inside," she explained; "that I shall need for
+months."
+
+"Ah, I expect your poor mother has sat up sewing herself to death, that
+you may be as well dressed as the rest of them," said Godmother, and
+heaved a doleful sigh. But Cousin Grace laughed the wide laugh that
+displayed a mouthful of great healthy teeth.
+
+"What? All your clothes in there?" she cried. "I say! You couldn't be a
+queen if you hadn't more togs than that."
+
+"Oh, I know," Laura hastened to reply, and grew very red. "Queens need a
+lot more clothes than I've got."
+
+"Tut, tut!" said Godmother: she did not understand the allusion, which
+referred to a former ambition of Laura's. "Don't talk such nonsense to
+the child."
+
+She drove very badly, and they went by quiet by-streets to escape
+the main traffic: the pony-chaise wobbled at random from one side of the
+road to the other, obstacles looming up only just in time for Godmother
+to see them. The ponies shook and tossed their heads at the constant
+sawing of the bits, and Laura had to be continually ducking, to keep out
+of the way of the reins. She let the unfamiliar streets go past her in a
+kind of dream; and there was silence for a time, broken only by
+Godmother's expostulations with the ponies, till Cousin Grace, growing
+tired of playing her bright eyes first on this, then on that, brought
+them back to Laura and studied her up and down.
+
+"I say, who on earth trimmed your hat?" she asked almost at once.
+
+"Mother," answered Laura bravely, while the colour mounted to her cheeks
+again.
+
+"Well, I guess she made up her mind you shouldn't get lost as long as
+you wore it," went on her cousin with disconcerting candour. "It makes
+you look just like a great big red double dahlia."
+
+"Let the child be. She looks well enough," threw in Godmother in her
+snappish way. But Laura was sure that she, too disapproved; and felt
+more than she heard the muttered remark about "Jane always having had a
+taste for something gay."
+
+"Oh, I like the colour very much. I chose it myself," said Laura, and
+looked straight at the two faces before her. But her lips twitched. She
+would have liked to snatch the hat from her head, to throw it in front
+of the ponies and hear them trample it under their hoofs. She had never
+wanted the scarlet lining of the big, upturned brim; in a dislike
+to being conspicuous which was incomprehensible to Mother, she had
+implored the latter to "leave it plain". But Mother had said: "Nonsense!"
+and "Hold your tongue!" and "I know better,"--with this result.
+
+Oh yes, she saw well enough how Godmother signed with her eyes to Cousin
+Grace to say no more; but she pretended not to notice, and for the
+remainder of the drive nobody spoke. They went past long lines of grey
+houses, joined one to another and built exactly alike; past large,
+fenced-in public parks where all kinds of odd, unfamiliar trees grew,
+with branches that ran right down their trunks, and bushy leaves. The
+broad streets were hilly; the wind, coming in puffs, met them with
+clouds of gritty white dust. They had just, with bent heads, their hands
+at their hats, passed through one of these miniature whirlwinds, when
+turning a corner they suddenly drew up, and the boy sprang to the
+ponies' heads. Laura, who had not been expecting the end so soon, saw
+only a tall wooden fence; but Cousin Grace looked higher, gave a stagey
+shudder and cried: "Oh my eye Betty Martin! Aren't I glad it isn't me
+that's going to school! It looks just like a prison."
+
+It certainly was an imposing building viewed from within, when the
+paling-gate had closed behind them. To Laura, who came from a township
+of one-storied brick or weatherboard houses, it seemed vast in its
+breadth and height, appalling in its sombre greyness. Between Godmother
+and Cousin Grace she walked up an asphalted path, and mounted the steps
+that led to a massive stone portico. The bell Godmother rang made no
+answering sound, but after a very few seconds the door swung
+back, and a slender maidservant in cap and apron stood before them. She
+smiled at them pleasantly, as, in Chinaman-fashion, they crossed the
+threshold; then, inclining her head at a murmured word from Godmother,
+she vanished as lightly as she had come, and they sat and looked about
+them. They were in a plainly furnished but very lofty waiting-room.
+There were two large windows. The venetian blinds had not been lowered,
+and the afternoon sun, beating in, displayed a shabby patch on the
+carpet. It showed up, too, a coating of dust that had gathered on the
+desk-like, central table. There was the faint, distinctive smell of
+strange furniture. But what impressed Laura most was the stillness. No
+street noises pierced the massy walls, but neither did the faintest echo
+of all that might be taking place in the great building itself reach
+their ears: they sat aloof, shut off, as it were, from the living world.
+And this feeling soon grew downright oppressive: it must be like this to
+be dead, thought Laura to herself; and inconsequently remembered a
+quarter of an hour she had once spent in a dentist's ante-room: there as
+here the same soundless vacancy, the same anguished expectancy. Now, as
+then, her heart began to thump so furiously that she was afraid the
+others would hear it. But they, too, were subdued; though Cousin Grace
+tittered continually you heard only a gentle wheezing, and even
+Godmother expressed the hope that they would not be kept waiting long,
+under her breath. But minute after minute went by; there they sat and
+nothing happened. It began to seem as if they might sit on for ever.
+
+All of a sudden, from out the spacious halls of which they had
+caught a glimpse on arriving, brisk steps began to come towards them
+over the oilcloth--at first as a mere tapping in the distance, then
+rapidly gaining in weight and decision. Laura's palpitations reached
+their extreme limit--another second and they might have burst her
+chest. Cousin Grace ceased to giggle; the door opened with a peculiar
+flourish; and all three rose to their feet.
+
+The person who entered was a very stately lady; she wore a cap with
+black ribbons. With the door-handle still in her hand she made a slight
+obeisance, in which her whole body joined, afterwards to become more
+erect than before. Having introduced herself to Godmother as Mrs.
+Gurley, the Lady Superintendent of the institution, she drew up a chair,
+let herself down upon it, and began to converse with an air of ineffable
+condescension.
+
+While she talked Laura examined her, with a child's thirst for detail.
+Mrs. Gurley was large and generous of form, and she carried her head in
+such a haughty fashion that it made her look taller than she really was.
+She had a high colour, her black hair was touched with grey, her upper
+teeth were prominent. She wore gold eyeglasses, many rings, a long gold
+chain, which hung from an immense cameo brooch at her throat, and a
+black apron with white flowers on it, one point of which was pinned to
+her ample bosom. The fact that Laura had just such an apron in her box
+went only a very little way towards reviving her spirits; for altogether
+Mrs. Gurley was the most impressive person she had ever set eyes on.
+Beside her, God mother was nothing but a plump, shortsighted fidgety
+lady.
+
+Particularly awe-inspiring was Mrs. Gurley when she listened to
+another speaking. She held her head a little to one side, her teeth met
+her underlip and her be-ringed hands toyed incessantly with the long
+gold chain, in a manner which seemed to denote that she set little value
+on what was being said. Awful, too, was the habit she had of suddenly
+lowering her head and looking at you over the tops of her glasses: when
+she did this, and when her teeth came down on her lip, you would have
+liked to shrink to the size of a mouse. Godmother, it was true, was not
+afraid of her; but Cousin Grace was hushed at last and as for Laura
+herself, she consciously wore a fixed little simper, which was meant to
+put it beyond doubt that butter would not melt in her mouth.
+
+Godmother now asked if she might say a few words in private, and the two
+ladies left the room. As the door closed behind them Cousin Grace began
+to be audible again.
+
+"Oh, snakes!" she giggled, and her double chin spread itself "There's a
+Tartar for you! Don't I thank my stars it's not me that's being shunted
+off here! She'll give you what-for."
+
+"I don't think so. I think she's very nice," said Laura staunchly, out
+of an instinct that made her chary of showing fear, or pain, or grief.
+But her heart began to bound again, for the moment in which she would be
+left alone.
+
+"You see!" said Cousin Grace. "It'll be bread and water for a week, if
+you can't do AMARE first go-off--not to mention the deponents."
+
+"What's AMARE?" asked Laura anxiously, and her eyes grew so big that
+they seemed to fill her face.
+
+But Cousin Grace only laughed till it seemed probable that she
+would burst her bodice; and Laura blushed, aware that she had
+compromised herself anew.
+
+There followed a long and nervous pause.
+
+"I bet Godmother's asking her not to wallop you too often," the tease
+had just begun afresh, when the opening of the door forced her to
+swallow her sentence in the middle.
+
+Godmother would not sit down; so the dreaded moment had come.
+
+"Now, Laura. Be a good girl and learn well, and be a comfort to your
+mother.--Not that there's much need to urge her to her books,"
+Godmother interrupted herself, turning to Mrs. Gurley. "The trouble her
+dear mother has always had has been to keep her from them."
+
+Laura glowed with pleasure. Now at least the awful personage would know
+that she was clever, and loved to learn. But Mrs. Gurley smiled the
+chilliest thinkable smile of acknowledgment, and did not reply a word.
+
+She escorted the other to the front door, and held it open for them to
+pass out. Then, however, her pretence of affability faded clean away:
+turning her head just so far that she could look down her nose at her
+own shoulder, she said: "Follow me!"--in a tone Mother would not have
+used even to Sarah. Feeling inexpressibly small Laura was about to obey,
+when a painful thought struck her.
+
+"Oh please, I had a box--with my clothes in it!" she cried. "Oh, I hope
+they haven't forgotten and taken it away again."
+
+But she might as well have spoken to the hatstand: Mrs. Gurley
+had sailed off, and was actually approaching a turn in the hall before
+Laura made haste to follow her and to keep further anxiety about her box
+to herself. They went past one staircase, round a bend into shadows as
+black as if, outside, no sun were shining, and began to ascend another
+flight of stairs, which was the widest Laura had ever seen. The
+banisters were as thick as your arm, and on each side of the
+stair-carpeting the space was broad enough for two to walk abreast: what
+a splendid game of trains you could have played there! On the other hand
+the landing windows were so high up that only a giant could have seen
+out of them.
+
+These things occurred to Laura mechanically. What really occupied her,
+as she trudged behind, was how she could please this hard-faced woman
+and make her like her, for the desire to please, to be liked by all the
+world, was the strongest her young soul knew. And there must be a way,
+for Godmother had found it without difficulty.
+
+She took two steps at once, to get nearer to the portly back in front of
+her.
+
+"What a VERY large place this is!" she said in an insinuating voice.
+
+She hoped the admiration, thus subtly expressed in the form of surprise,
+would flatter Mrs. Gurley, as a kind of co-proprietor; but it was
+evident that it did nothing of the sort: the latter seemed to have gone
+deaf and dumb, and marched on up the stairs, her hands clasped at her
+waist, her eyes fixed ahead, like a walking stone-statue.
+
+On the top floor she led the way to a room at the end of a long
+passage. There were four beds in this room, a washhand--stand, a chest
+of drawers, and a wall cupboard. But at first sight Laura had eyes only
+for the familiar object that stood at the foot of one of the beds.
+
+"Oh, THERE'S my box!" she cried, "Someone must have brought it up."
+
+It was unroped; she had simply to hand over the key. Mrs. Gurley went
+down on her knees before it, opened the lid, and began to pass the
+contents to Laura, directing her where to lay and hang them. Overawed by
+such complaisance, Laura moved nimbly about the room shaking and
+unfolding, taking care to be back at the box to the minute so as not to
+keep Mrs. Gurley waiting. And her promptness was rewarded; the stern
+face seemed to relax. At the mere hint of this, Laura grew warm through
+and through; and as she could neither control her feelings nor keep them
+to herself, she rushed to an extreme and overshot the mark.
+
+"I've got an apron like that. I think they're so pretty," she said
+cordially, pointing to the one Mrs. Gurley wore.
+
+The latter abruptly stopped her work, and, resting her hands on the
+sides of the box, gave Laura one of the dreaded looks over her glasses,
+looked at her from top to toe, and as though she were only now beginning
+to see her. There was a pause, a momentary suspension of the breath,
+which Laura soon learned to expect before a rebuke.
+
+"Little gels," said Mrs. Gurley--and even in the midst of her confusion
+Laura could not but be struck by the pronunciation of this word. "Little
+gels--are required--to wear white aprons when they come here!"
+--a break after each few words, as well as an emphatic head-shake,
+accentuated their severity. "And I should like to know, if your mother,
+has never taught you, that it is very rude, to point, and also to
+remark, on what people wear."
+
+Laura went scarlet: if there was one thing she, Mother all of them
+prided themselves on, it was the good manners that had been instilled
+into them since their infancy.--The rough reproof seemed to scorch her.
+
+She went to and fro more timidly than before. Then, however, something
+happened which held a ray of hope.
+
+"Why, what is this?" asked Mrs. Gurley freezingly, and held up to view--
+with the tips of her fingers, Laura thought--a small, black Prayer
+Book. "Pray, are you not a dissenter?"--For the College was
+nonconformist.
+
+"Well . . . no, I'm not," said Laura, in a tone of intense apology.
+Here, at last, was her chance. "But it really doesn't matter a bit. I can
+go to another church quite well. I even think I'd rather. For a change.
+And the service isn't so long, at least so I've heard--except the
+sermon," she added truthfully.
+
+Had she denied religion altogether, the look Mrs. Gurley bent on her
+could not have been more annihilating.
+
+"There is--unfortunately!--no occasion, for you to do anything of the
+kind," she retorted. "I myself, am an Episcopalian, and I expect those
+gels, who belong to the Church of England, to attend it, with me."
+
+The unpacking at an end, Mrs. Gurley rose, smoothed down her
+apron, and was just on the point of turning away, when on the bed
+opposite Laura's she espied an under-garment, lying wantonly across the
+counterpane. At this blot on the orderliness of the room she seemed to
+swell like a turkey-cock, seemed literally to grow before Laura's eyes
+as, striding to the door, she commanded an invisible some one to send
+Lilith Gordon to her "DI-rectly!"!
+
+There was an awful pause; Laura did not dare to raise her head; she even
+said a little prayer. Mrs. Gurley stood working at her chain, and
+tapping her foot--like a beast waiting for its prey, thought the child.
+And at last a hurried step was heard in the corridor, the door opened
+and a girl came in, high-coloured and scant of breath. Laura darted one
+glance at Mrs. Gurley's face, then looked away and studied the pattern
+of a quilt, trying not to hear what was said. Her throat swelled, grew
+hard and dry with pity for the culprit. But Lilith Gordon--a girl with
+sandy eyebrows, a turned-up nose, a thick plait of red-gold hair, and a
+figure so fully developed that Laura mentally dubbed it a "lady's
+figure", and put its owner down for years older than herself--Lilith
+Gordon neither fell on her knees nor sank through the floor. Her lashes
+were lowered, in a kind of dog-like submission, and her face had gone
+very red when Laura ventured to look at her again; but that was all. And
+Mrs. Gurley having swept Jove-like from the room, this bold girl
+actually set her finger to her nose and muttered: "Old Brimstone Beast!"
+As she passed Laura, too, she put out her tongue and said: "Now
+then, goggle-eyes, what have you got to stare at?"
+
+Laura was deeply hurt: she had gazed at Lilith out of the purest
+sympathy. And now, as she stood waiting for Mrs. Gurley, who seemed to
+have forgotten her, the strangeness of things, and the general
+unfriendliness of the people struck home with full force. The late
+afternoon sun was shining in, in an unfamiliar way; outside were strange
+streets, strange noises, a strange white dust, the expanse of a big,
+strange city. She felt unspeakably far away now, from the small, snug
+domain of home. Here, nobody wanted her . . . she was alone among
+strangers, who did not even like her . . . she had already, without
+meaning it, offended two of them.
+
+Another second, and the shameful tears might have found their way out.
+But at this moment there was a kind of preparatory boom in the distance,
+and the next, a great bell clanged through the house, pealing on and on,
+long after one's ears were rasped by the din. It was followed by an
+exodus from the rooms round about; there was a sound of voices and of
+feet. Mrs. Gurley ceased to give orders in the passage, and returning,
+bade Laura put on a pinafore and follow her.
+
+They descended the broad staircase. At a door just at the foot, Mrs.
+Gurley paused and smoothed her already faultless bands of hair; then
+turned the handle and opened the door, with the majestic swing Laura had
+that day once before observed. 
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+
+
+Fifty-five heads turned as if by clockwork, and fifty-five pairs of eyes
+were levelled at the small girl in the white apron who meekly followed
+Mrs. Gurley down the length of the dining-room. Laura crimsoned under
+the unexpected ordeal, and tried to fix her attention on the flouncing
+of Mrs. Gurley's dress. The room seemed hundreds of feet long, and not a
+single person at the tea-tables but took stock of her. The girls made no
+scruple of leaning backwards and forwards, behind and before their
+neighbours, in order to see her better, and even the governesses were
+not above having a look. All were standing. On Mrs. Gurley assigning
+Laura a place at her own right hand, Laura covered herself with
+confusion by taking her seat at once, before grace had been said, and
+before the fifty-five had drawn in their chairs with the noise of a
+cavalry brigade on charge. She stood up again immediately, but it was
+too late; an audible titter whizzed round the table: the new girl had
+sat down. For minutes after, Laura was lost in the pattern on her plate;
+and not till tongues were loosened and dishes being passed, did she
+venture to steal a glance round.
+
+There were four tables, with a governess at the head and foot of each to
+pour out tea. It was more of a hall than a room and had high,
+church-like windows down one side. At both ends were scores of
+pigeon-holes. There was a piano in it and a fireplace; it had [P.45]
+pale blue walls, and only strips of carpet on the floor. At present it
+was darkish, for the windows did not catch the sun.
+
+Laura was roused by a voice at her side; turning, she found her
+neighbour offering her a plate of bread.
+
+"No, thank you," she said impulsively; for the bread was cut in chunks,
+and did not look inviting.
+
+But the girl nudged her on the sly. "You'd better take some," she
+whispered.
+
+Laura then saw that there was nothing else. But she saw, too, the smiles
+and signs that again flew round: the new girl had said no.
+
+Humbly she accepted the butter and the cup of tea which were passed to
+her in turn, and as humbly ate the piece of rather stale bread. She felt
+forlornly miserable under the fire of all these unkind eyes, which took
+a delight in marking her slips: at the smallest further mischance she
+might disgrace herself by bursting out crying. Just at this moment,
+however, something impelled her to look up. Her vis-a-vis, whom she had
+as yet scarcely noticed, was staring hard. And now, to her great
+surprise, this girl winked at her, winked slowly and deliberately with
+the right eye. Laura was so discomposed that she looked away again at
+once, and some seconds elapsed before she was brave enough to take
+another peep. The wink was repeated.
+
+It was a black-haired girl this time, a girl with small blue eyes, a
+pale, freckled skin, and large white teeth. What most impressed Laura,
+though, was her extraordinary gravity: she chewed away with a face as
+solemn as a parson's; and then just when you were least expecting it,
+came the wink. Laura was fascinated: she lay in wait for it
+beforehand and was doubtful whether to feel offended by it or to laugh
+at it. But at least it made her forget her mishaps, and did away with
+the temptation to cry.
+
+When, however, Mrs. Gurley had given the signal, and the fifty-five had
+pushed back their chairs and set them to the table again with the same
+racket as before, Laura's position was a painful one. Everybody pushed,
+and talked, and laughed, in a hurry to leave the hall, and no one took
+any notice of her except to stare. After some indecision, she followed
+the rest through a door. Here she found herself on a verandah facing the
+grounds of the school. There was a long bench, on which several people
+were sitting: she took a modest seat at one end. Two of the younger
+governesses looked at her and laughed, and made a remark. She saw her
+room-mate, Lilith Gordon, arm in arm with a couple of companions. The
+winker of the tea-table turned out to be a girl of her own age, but of a
+broader make; she had fat legs, which were encased in thickly-ribbed
+black stockings. As she passed the bench she left the friend she was
+with, to come up to Laura and dig her in the ribs.
+
+"DIDN'T she like her bread and butter, poor little thing?" she said.
+Laura shrank from the dig, which was rough; but she could not help
+smiling shyly at the girl, who looked good-natured. If only she had
+stayed and talked to her! But she was off and away, her arm round a
+comrade's neck.
+
+Besides herself, there was now only an elderly governess left, who was
+reading. She, Laura, in her solitude, was conspicuous to every eye. But
+at this juncture up came two rather rollicking older girls, one
+of whom was fair, with a red complexion. AS soon as their loud voices
+had driven the governess away, the smaller of the two, who had a
+pronounced squint, turned to Laura.
+
+"Hullo, you kid," she said, "what's YOUR name?"
+
+Laura artlessly replied. She was dumbfounded by the storm of merriment
+that followed. Maria Morell, the fat girl, went purple, and had to be
+thumped on the back by her friend.
+
+"Oh, my!" she gasped, when she had got her breath. "Oh, my . . . hold
+me, some one, or I shall split! Oh, golly! Laura . . . Tweedle . . .
+Rambotham--Laura . . . Tweedle . . . Rambotham! . . ." her voice tailed
+off again. "Gosh! Was there ever such a name?"
+
+She laughed till she could laugh no more, rocking backwards and forwards
+and from side to side; while her companion proceeded to make further
+inquiries.
+
+"Where do you come from?" the squint demanded of Laura, in a
+business-like way.
+
+Laura named the township, quaveringly. "What's your father?"
+
+"He's dead," answered the child.
+
+"Well, but I suppose he was alive once wasn't he, duffer? What was he
+before he was dead?"
+
+"A barrister."
+
+"What did he die of?" 
+
+"Consumption."
+
+"How many servants do you keep?" 
+
+"One."
+
+"How much have you got a year?" 
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"How old are you?"
+
+"Twelve and a quarter."
+
+"Who made your dress?" 
+
+"Mother."
+
+"Oh, I say, hang it, that's enough. Stop teasing the kid," said Maria
+Morell, when the laughter caused by the last admission had died away.
+But the squint spied a friend, ran to her, and there was a great deal of
+whispering and sniggering. Presently the pair came sauntering up and sat
+down; and after some artificial humming and hawing the newcomer began to
+talk, in a loud and fussy manner, about certain acquaintances of hers
+called Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Both the fat girl and the
+squint "split" with laughter. Laura sat with her hands locked one inside
+the other; there was no escape for her, for she did not know where to
+go. But when the third girl put the regulation question: "What's your
+name and what's your father?" she turned on her, with the courage of
+despair.
+
+"What's yours?" she retorted hotly, at the same time not at all sure how
+the big girl might revenge herself. To her relief, the others burst out
+laughing at their friend's bafflement.
+
+"That's one for you, Kate Horner," said Maria with a chuckle. "Not bad
+for the kid.--Come on, Kid, will you have a walk round the garden?"
+
+"Oh yes, PLEASE," said Laura, reddening with pleasure; and there she
+was, arm in arm with her fat saviour, promenading the grounds like any
+other of the fifty-five.
+
+She assumed, as well as she could, an air of feeling at her ease
+even in the presence of the cold and curious looks that met her. The fat
+girl was protective, and Laura felt too grateful to her to take it amiss
+that every now and then she threw back her head and laughed anew, at the
+remembrance of Laura's patronymics; or that she still exchanged jokes
+about them with the other couple, when they met.
+
+But by this time half an hour had slipped away, and the girls were fast
+disappearing. Maria Morell loitered till the last minute, then said,
+she, too, must be off to 'stew'. Every one was hastening across the
+verandah laden with books, and disappearing down a corridor. Left alone,
+Laura made her way back to the dining-hall. Here some of the very young
+boarders were preparing their lessons, watched over by a junior
+governess. Laura lingered for a little, to see if no order were
+forthcoming, then diffidently approached the table and asked the
+governess if she would please tell her what to do.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," answered that lady, disinclined for
+responsibility. "You'd better ask Miss Chapman. Here, Maggie, show her
+where the study is."
+
+Laura followed the little girl over the verandah and down the corridor.
+At the end, the child pointed to a door, and on opening this Laura found
+herself in a very large brightly lighted room, where the boarders sat at
+two long tables with their books before them. Every head was raised at
+her entrance. In great embarrassment, she threaded her way to the more
+authoritative-looking of the governesses in charge, and proffered her
+request. It was not understood, and she had to repeat it.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said Miss Day in her turn: she had
+stiff, black, wavy hair, a vivid colour, and a big, thick nose which
+made her profile resemble that of a horse. "Can't you twiddle your thumbs
+for a bit?--Oh well, if you're so desperately anxious for an
+occupation, you'd better ask Miss Chapman."
+
+The girls in the immediate neighbourhood laughed noiselessly, in a
+bounden-duty kind of way, at their superior's pleasantry, and Laura,
+feeling as though she had been hit, crossed to the other table. Miss
+Chapman, the head governess, was neither so hard-looking nor so
+brilliant as Miss Day. She even eyed Laura somewhat uneasily, meanwhile
+toying with a long gold chain, after the manner of the Lady
+Superintendent.
+
+"Didn't Mrs. Gurley tell you what to do?" she queried. "I should think it
+likely she would. Oh well, if she didn't, I suppose you'd better bring
+your things downstairs. Yes . . . and ask Miss Zielinski to give you a
+shelf."
+
+Miss Zielinski--she was the governess in the dining-hall--said: "Oh,
+very well," in the rather whiny voice that seemed natural to her, and
+went on reading.
+
+"Please, I don't think I know my way," ventured Laura.
+
+"Follow your nose and you'll find it!" said Miss Zielinski without
+looking up, and was forthwith wrapt in her novel again.
+
+Once more Laura climbed the wide staircase: it was but dimly lighted,
+and the passages were in darkness. After a few false moves she found her
+room, saw that her box had been taken away, her books left lying [P.51]
+on a chair. But instead of picking them up, she threw herself on her bed
+and buried her face in the pillow. She did not dare to cry, for fear of
+making her eyes red, but she hugged the cool linen to her cheeks.
+
+"I hate them all," she said passionately, speaking aloud to herself. "Oh,
+HOW I hate them!"--and wild schemes of vengeance flashed through her
+young mind. She did not even halt at poison or the knife: a big cake,
+sent by Mother, of which she invited all alike to partake, and into
+which she inserted a fatal poison, so that the whole school died like
+rabbits; or a nightly stabbing, a creeping from bed to bed in the dark,
+her penknife open in her hand... 
+
+But she had not lain thus for more than a very few minutes when steps
+came along the passage; and she had only just time to spring to her feet
+before one of the little girls appeared at the door.
+
+"You're to come down at once."
+
+"Don't you know you're not ALLOWED to stay upstairs?" asked Miss
+Zielinski crossly. "What were you doing?" And as Laura did not
+reply: "What was she doing, Jessie?"
+
+"I don't know," said the child. "She was just standing there." And all
+the little girls laughed, after the manner of their elders.
+
+Before Laura had finished arranging her belongings on the shelves that
+were assigned to her, some of the older girls began to drop in from the
+study. One unceremoniously turned over her books, which were lying on
+the table.
+
+"Let's see what the kid's got."
+
+Now Laura was proud of her collection: it really made a great show; for
+a daughter of Godmother's had once attended the College, and her
+equipment had been handed down to Laura.
+
+"Why, you don't mean to say a kid like you's in the Second Principia
+already?" said a big girl, and held up, incredulously, Smith's black and
+red boards. "Wherever did YOU learn Latin?"
+
+In the reediest of voices Laura was forced to confess that she had never
+learnt Latin at all.
+
+The girl eyed her in dubious amaze, then burst out laughing. "Oh, I
+say!" she called to a friend. "Here's a rum go. Here's this kid brings
+the Second Principia with her and doesn't know the First."
+
+Several others crowded round; and all found this divergence from the
+norm, from the traditional method of purchasing each book new and as it
+was needed, highly ridiculous. Laura, on her knees before her shelf,
+pretended to be busy; but she could not see what she was doing, for the
+mist that gathered in her eyes.
+
+Just at this moment, however, in marched Maria Morell. "Here, I say,
+stop that!" she cried. "You're teasing that kid again. I won't have it.
+Here, come on, Kid--Laura Tweedledum come and sit by me for supper."
+
+For the second time, Laura was thankful to the fat girl. But as ill-luck
+would have it, Miss Chapman chanced to let her eyes stray in their
+direction; and having fingered her chain indecisively for a little,
+said: "It seems a pity, doesn't it, Miss Day, that that nice little girl
+should get in with that vulgar set?"
+
+Miss Chapman liked to have her opinions confirmed. But this was a
+weakness Miss Day did not pamper; herself strong-minded, she could
+afford to disregard Miss Chapman's foibles. So she went on with
+her book, and ignored the question. But Miss Zielinski, who lost no
+opportunity of making herself agreeable to those over her, said with
+foreign emphasis: "Yes, indeed it does."
+
+So Laura was summoned and made to sit down at the end of the room, close
+to the governesses and beside the very big girls--girls of eighteen and
+nineteen, who seemed older still to her, with their figures, and waists,
+and skirts that touched the ground.
+
+Instinctively she felt that they resented her proximity. The biggest of
+all, a pleasant-faced girl with a kind smile, said on seeing her
+downcast air: "Poor little thing! Never mind. "But when they talked among
+themselves they lowered their voices and cast stealthy glances at her,
+to see if she were listening.
+
+Supper over, three chairs were set out in an exposed position; the big
+bell in the passage was lightly touched; everyone fetched a hymn-book,
+one with music in it being handed to Miss Chapman at the piano. The door
+opened to admit first Mrs. Gurley, then the Principal and his wife--a
+tall, fair gentleman in a long coat, and a sweet-faced lady, who wore a
+rose in her velvet dress.
+
+"Let us sing in the hundred and fifty-seventh hymn," said the gentleman,
+who had a Grecian profile and a drooping, sandy moustache; and when Miss
+Chapman had played through the tune, the fifty-five, the governesses,
+the lady and gentleman rose to their feet and sang, with halting
+emphasis, of the Redeemer and His mercy, to Miss Chapman's
+accompaniment, which was as indecisive as her manner, the left hand
+dragging lamely along after the right.
+
+"Let us read in the third chapter of the Second Epistle of Paul
+to the Thessalonians."
+
+Everyone laid her hymn-book on the table and sat down to listen to
+Paul's words, which the sandy gentleman read to a continual nervous
+movement of the left leg.
+
+"Let us pray."
+
+Obeying the word, the fifty-five rose, faced about, and knelt to their
+chairs. It was an extempore prayer, and a long one, and Laura did not
+hear much of it; for the two big girls on her right kept up throughout a
+running conversation. Also, when it was about half over she was startled
+to hear Miss Zielinski say, in a shrill whisper: "Heavens! There's that
+mouse again," and audibly draw her skirts round her. Even Miss Chapman,
+praying to her piano-chair some distance off, had heard, and turned her
+head to frown rebuke.
+
+The prayer at an end, Mr. and Mrs. Strachey bowed vaguely in several
+directions, shook hands with the governesses, and left the room. This
+was the signal for two of the teachers to advance with open Bibles.
+
+"Here, little one, have you learned your verse?" whispered Laura's
+pleasant neighbour.
+
+Laura knew nothing of it; but the big girl lent her a Bible, and, since
+it was not a hard verse and every girl repeated it, it was quickly
+learned.
+
+I WISDOM DWELL WITH PRUDENCE AND FIND OUT KNOWLEDGE OF WITTY INVENTIONS. 
+
+Told off in batches, they filed up the stairs. On the first landing
+stood Miss Day, watching with lynx-eyes to see that no books or eatables
+were smuggled to the bedrooms. In a strident voice she exhorted
+the noisy to silence, and the loiterers to haste.
+
+Laura sped to her room. She was fortunate enough to find it still empty.
+Tossing off her clothes, she gabbled ardently through her own prayers,
+drew the blankets up over her head, and pretended to be asleep. Soon the
+lights were out and all was quiet. Then, with her face burrowed deep, so
+that not a sound could escape, she gave free play to her tears. 
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+
+
+MY DEAR MOTHER
+
+I SENT YOU A POSTCARD DID YOU GET IT. I TOLD YOU I GOT HERE ALL RIGHT
+AND LIKED IT VERY MUCH. I COULD NOT WRITE A LONG LETTER BEFORE I HAD NO
+TIME AND WE ARE ONLY ALOWED TO WRITE LETTERS TWO EVENINGS A WEEK TUESDAY
+AND FRIDAY. WHEN WE HAVE DONE OUR LESSONS FOR NEXT DAY WE SAY PLEASE MAY
+I WRITE NOW AND MISS CHAPMAN SAYS HAVE YOU DONE EVERYTHING AND IF WE SAY
+WE HAVE SHE SAYS YES AND IF YOU SIT AT MISS DAYS TABLE MISS DAY SAYS IT.
+AND SOMETIMES WE HAVEN'T BUT WE SAY SO. I SIT UP BY MISS CHAPMAN AND SHE
+CAN SEE EVERYTHING I DO AND AT TEA AND DINNER AND BREAKFAST I SIT BESIDE
+MRS. GURLEY. ANOTHER GIRL IN MY CLASS SITS OPPOSITE AND ONE SITS BESIDE
+ME AND WE WOULD RATHER SIT SOMEWHERE ELSE. I DON'T CARE FOR MRS. GURLEY
+MUCH SHE IS VERY FAT AND NEVER SMILES AND NEVER LISTENS TO WHAT YOU SAY
+UNLESS SHE SCOLDS YOU AND I THINK MISS CHAPMAN IS AFRAID OF HER TO. MISS
+DAY IS NOT AFRAID OF ANYBODY. I AM IN THE FIRST CLASS. I AM IN THE
+COLLEGE AND UNDER THAT IS THE SCHOOL. ONLY VERY LITTLE GIRLS ARE IN THE
+SCHOOL THEY GO TO BED AT HALF PAST EIGHT AND DO THEIR LESSONS IN THE
+DINING HALL. I DO MINE IN THE STUDY AND GO TO BED WITH THE BIG GIRLS.
+THEY WEAR DRESSES DOWN TO THE GROUND. LILITH GORDON IS A GIRL IN MY
+CLASS SHE IS IN MY ROOM TO SHE IS ONLY AS OLD AS ME AND SHE WEARS STAYS
+AND HAS A BEAUTIFUL FIGGURE. ALL THE GIRLS WEAR STAYS. PLEASE SEND ME
+SOME I HAVE NO WASTE. A GOVERNESS SLEEPS IN OUR ROOM AND SHE HAS
+NO TEETH. SHE TAKES THEM OUT EVERY NIGHT AND PUTS THEM IN WATER WHEN THE
+LIGHT IS OUT. LILITH GORDON AND THE OTHER GIRL SAY GOODNIGHT TO HER
+AFTER SHE HAS TAKEN THEM OFF THEN SHE CANT TALK PROPPERLY AND WE WANT TO
+HEAR HER. I THINK SHE KNOWS FOR SHE IS VERY CROSS. I DON'T LEARN LATIN
+YET TILL I GO INTO THE SECOND CLASS MY SUMS ARE VERY HARD. FOR SUPPER
+THERE IS ONLY BREAD AND BUTTER AND WATER IF WE DON'T HAVE CAKE AND JAM
+OF OUR OWN. PLEASE SEND ME SOME STRAWBERRY JAM AND ANOTHER CAKE. TELL
+SARAH THERE ARE THREE SERVANTS TO WAIT AT DINNER THEY HAVE WHITE APRONS
+AND A CAP ON THEIR HEADS. THEY SAY WILL YOU TAKE BEEF MISS
+
+I REMAIN
+
+YOUR LOVING DAUGHTER
+
+LAURA.
+
+DEAR PIN
+
+I AM VERY BUSY I WILL WRITE YOU A LETTER. YOU WOULD NOT LIKE BEING HERE
+I THINK YOU SHOULD ALWAYS STOP AT HOME YOU WILL NEVER GET AS FAR AS LONG
+DIVISION. MRS. GURLEY IS AN AWFUL OLD BEAST ALL THE GIRLS CALL HER THAT.
+YOU WOULD BE FRIGHTENED OF HER. IN THE AFTERNOON AFTER SCHOOL WE WALK
+TWO AND TWO AND YOU ASK A GIRL TO WALK WITH YOU AND IF YOU DON'T YOU HAVE
+TO WALK WITH MISS CHAPMAN. MISS CHAPMAN AND MISS DAY WALKS BEHIND AND
+THEY WATCH TO SEE YOU DON'T LAUGH AT BOYS. SOME GIRLS WRITE LETTERS TO
+THEM AND SAY THEY WILL MEET THEM UP BEHIND A TREE IN THE CORNER OF THE
+GARDEN A PALING IS LOSE AND THE BOYS PUT LETTERS IN. I THINK BOYS ARE
+SILLY BUT MARIA MORELL SAYS THEY ARE TIP TOP THAT MEANS AWFULLY JOLLY.
+SHE WRITES A LETTER TO BOYS EVERY WEEK SHE TAKES IT TO CHURCH AND
+DROPS IT COMING OUT AND HE PICKS IT UP AND PUTS AN ANSWER THROUGH THE
+FENCE. WE PUT OUR LETTERS ON THE MANTLEPIECE IN THE DINING-HALL AND MRS.
+GURLEY OR MISS CHAPMAN READ THE ADRESS TO SEE WE DON'T WRITE TO BOYS.
+THEY ARE SHUT UP SHE CANT READ THE INSIDE. I HOPE YOU DON'T CRY SO MUCH
+AT SCHOOL NO ONE CRIES. NOW MISS CHAPMAN SAYS IT IS TIME TO STOP
+
+I REMAIN
+
+YOUR AFECTIONATE SISTER
+
+LAURA.
+
+P.S. I TOOK THE RED LINEING OUT OF MY HAT.
+
+WARRENEGA
+
+SUNDAY.
+
+MY DEAR LAURA
+
+WE WERE VERY GLAD TO GET YOUR LETTERS WHICH CAME THIS MORNING. YOUR
+POSTCARD WRITTEN THE DAY AFTER YOU ARRIVED AT THE COLLEGE TOLD US LITTLE
+OR NOTHING. HOWEVER GODMOTHER WAS GOOD ENOUGH TO WRITE US AN ACCOUNT OF
+YOUR ARRIVAL SO THAT WE WERE NOT QUITE WITHOUT NEWS OF YOU. I HOPE YOU
+REMEMBERED TO THANK HER FOR DRIVING IN ALL THAT WAY TO MEET YOU AND TAKE
+YOU TO SCHOOL WHICH WAS VERY GOOD OF HER. I AM GLAD TO HEAR YOU ARE
+SETTLING DOWN AND FEELING HAPPY AND I HOPE YOU WILL WORK HARD AND
+DISTINGUISH YOURSELF SO THAT I MAY BE PROUD OF YOU. BUT THERE ARE
+SEVERAL THINGS IN YOUR LETTERS I DO NOT LIKE. DID YOU REALLY THINK I
+SHOULDN'T READ WHAT YOU WROTE TO PIN. YOU ARE A VERY FOOLISH GIRL IF YOU
+DID. PIN THE SILLY CHILD TRIED TO HIDE IT AWAY BECAUSE SHE KNEW IT WOULD
+MAKE ME CROSS BUT I INSISTED ON HER SHOWING IT TO ME AND I AM ASHAMED OF
+YOU FOR WRITING SUCH NONSENSE TO HER. MARIA MORELL MUST BE A VERY
+VULGAR MINDED GIRL TO USE THE EXPRESSIONS SHE DOES. I HOPE MY LITTLE
+GIRL WILL TRY TO ONLY ASSOCIATE WITH NICE MINDED GIRLS. I DIDN'T SEND YOU
+TO SCHOOL TO GET NASTY IDEAS PUT INTO YOUR HEAD BUT TO LEARN YOUR
+LESSONS WELL AND GET ON. IF YOU WRITE SUCH VULGAR SILLY THINGS AGAIN I
+SHALL COMPLAIN TO MRS. GURLEY OR MR. STRACHEY ABOUT THE TONE OF THE
+COLLEGE AND WHAT GOES ON BEHIND THEIR BACKS. I THINK IT IS VERY RUDE OF
+YOU TOO TO CALL MRS. GURLEY NAMES. ALSO ABOUT THE POOR GOVERNESS WHO HAS
+TO WEAR FALSE TEETH. WAIT TILL ALL YOUR OWN TEETH ARE GONE AND THEN SEE
+HOW YOU WILL LIKE IT. I DO WANT YOU TO HAVE NICE FEELINGS AND NOT GROW
+ROUGH AND RUDE. THERE IS EVIDENTLY A VERY BAD TONE AMONG SOME OF THE
+GIRLS AND YOU MUST BE CAREFUL IN CHOOSING YOUR FRIENDS. I AM SORRY TO
+HEAR YOU ARE ONLY IN THE LOWEST CLASS. IT WOULD HAVE PLEASED ME BETTER
+IF YOU HAD GOT INTO THE SECOND BUT I ALWAYS TOLD YOU YOU WERE LAZY ABOUT
+YOUR SUMS--YOU CAN DO THEM WELL ENOUGH IF YOU LIKE. YOU DON'T NEED
+STAYS. I HAVE NEVER WORN THEM MYSELF AND I DON'T INTEND YOU TO EITHER.
+YOUR OWN MUSCLES ARE QUITE STRONG ENOUGH TO BEAR THE WEIGHT OF YOUR
+BACK. BREAD AND WATER IS NOT MUCH OF A SUPPER FOR YOU TO GO TO BED ON. I
+WILL SEND YOU ANOTHER CAKE SOON AND SOME JAM AND I HOPE YOU WILL SHARE
+IT WITH THE OTHER GIRLS. NOW TRY AND BE SENSIBLE AND INDUSTRIOUS AND
+MAKE NICE FRIENDS AND THEN I SHANT HAVE TO SCOLD YOU
+
+YOUR LOVING MOTHER
+
+J.T.R.
+
+P.S. ANOTHER THING IN YOUR LETTER I DON'T LIKE. YOU SAY YOU TELL YOUR
+GOVERNESS YOU HAVE FINISHED YOUR LESSONS WHEN YOU HAVE NOT DONE
+SO. THAT IS TELLING AN UNTRUTH AND I HOPE YOU ARE NOT GOING TO BE LED
+AWAY BY THE EXAMPLES OF BAD GIRLS. I HAVE ALWAYS BROUGHT YOU CHILDREN UP
+TO BE STRAIGHTFORWARD AND I AM ASTONISHED AT YOU BEGINNING FIBBING AS
+SOON AS YOU GET AWAY FROM HOME. FIBBING SOON LEADS TO SOMETHING WORSE.
+
+P.P.S. YOU MUST HAVE WRITTEN YOUR LETTER IN A GREAT HURRY FOR YOUR
+SPELLING IS ANYTHING BUT PERFECT. YOU ARE A VERY NAUGHTY GIRL TO MEDDLE
+WITH YOUR HAT. PIN HAS WRITTEN A LETTER WHICH I ENCLOSE THOUGH HER
+SPELLING IS WORSE THAN EVER.
+
+DEAR LAURA
+
+MOTHER SAYS YOU ARE A VERY SILY GIRL TO RITE SUCH SILY LETTERS I THINK
+YOU ARE SILY TO I SHOOD BE FRITENED OF MRS. GIRLY I DON'T WANT TO GO TO
+SKOOL I WOOD RATHER STOP WITH MOTHER AND BE A CUMFERT TO HER I THINK IT
+IS NAUTY TO DROP LETTERS IN CHERCH AND VERRY SILY TO RITE TO BOYS BOYS
+ARE SO SILY SARAH SENDS HER LUV SHE SAYS SHE WOOD NOT WARE A CAP ON HER
+HED NOT FOR ANNYTHING SHE SAYS SHE WOOD JUST AS SOON WARE A RING THRUGH
+HER NOSE.
+
+I REMAIN
+
+YOUR LUVING SISTER PIN.
+
+DEAR MOTHER
+
+PLEASE PLEASE DON'T WRITE TO MRS. GURLEY ABOUT THE TONE IN THE COLLEGE OR
+NOT TO MR. STRACHEY EITHER. I WILL NEVER BE SO SILLY AGAIN. I AM SORRY
+MY LETTERS WERE SO SILLY I WONT DO IT AGAIN. PLEASE DON'T WRITE TO
+THEM ABOUT IT. I DON'T GO MUCH WITH MARIA MORELL NOW I THINK SHE SHE IS
+VULGER TO. I KNOW TWO NICE GIRLS NOW IN MY OWN CLASS THEIR NAMES ARE
+INEZ AND BERTHA THEY ARE VERY NICE AND NOT AT ALL VULGER. MARIA MORELL
+IS FAT AND HAS A RED FACE SHE IS MUCH OLDER THAN ME AND I DON'T CARE FOR
+HER NOW. PLEASE DON'T WRITE TO MRS. GURLEY I WILL NEVER CALL HER NAMES
+AGAIN. I HAD TO WRITE MY LETTER QUICKLY BECAUSE WHEN I HAVE DONE MY
+LESSONS IT IS NEARLY TIME FOR SUPPER. I AM SORRY MY SPELLING WAS WRONG I
+WILL TAKE MORE PAINS NEXT TIME I WILL LEARN HARD AND GET ON AND SOON I
+WILL BE IN THE SECOND CLASS. I DID NOT MEAN I SAID I HAD DONE MY LESSONS
+WHEN I HAD NOT DONE THEM THE OTHER GIRLS SAY IT AND I THINK IT IS VERY
+WRONG OF THEM. PLEASE DON'T WRITE TO MRS. GURLEY I WILL TRY AND BE GOOD
+AND SENSIBLE AND NOT DO IT AGAIN IF YOU ONLY WONT WRITE.
+
+I REMAIN
+
+YOUR AFECTIONATE DAUGHTER
+
+LAURA.
+
+P.S. I CAN DO MY SUMS BETTER NOW.
+
+WARRENEGA
+
+MY DEAR LAURA
+
+MY LETTER EVIDENTLY GAVE YOU A GOOD FRIGHT AND I AM NOT SORRY TO HEAR IT
+FOR I THINK YOU DESERVED IT FOR BEING SUCH A FOOLISH GIRL. I HOPE YOU
+WILL KEEP YOUR PROMISE AND NOT DO IT AGAIN. OF COURSE I DON'T MEAN THAT
+YOU ARE NOT TO TELL ME EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS AT SCHOOL BUT I WANT YOU
+TO ONLY HAVE NICE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AND GROW INTO A WISE AND
+SENSIBLE GIRL. I AM NOT GOING TO WRITE A LONG LETTER TODAY. THIS [P.62]
+IS ONLY A LINE TO COMFORT YOU AND LET YOU KNOW THAT I SHALL NOT WRITE TO
+MRS. GURLEY OR MR. STRACHEY AS LONG AS I SEE THAT YOU ARE BEING A GOOD
+GIRL AND GETTING ON WELL WITH YOUR LESSONS. I DO WANT YOU TO REMEMBER
+THAT YOU ARE A LADY THOUGH YOU ARE POOR AND MUST BEHAVE IN A LADYLIKE
+WAY. YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT THE FOOD AT THE COLLEGE IS LIKE AND WHETHER
+YOU HAVE BLANKETS ENOUGH ON YOUR BED AT NIGHT. DO TRY AND REMEMBER TO
+ANSWER THE QUESTIONS I ASK YOU. SARAH IS BUSY WASHING TODAY AND THE
+CHILDREN ARE HELPING HER BY SITTING WITH THEIR ARMS IN THE TUBS. I AM TO
+TELL YOU FROM PIN THAT MAGGY IS MOULTING BADLY AND HAS NOT EATEN MUCH
+SINCE YOU LEFT WHICH IS JUST THREE WEEKS TODAY
+
+YOUR LOVING
+
+MOTHER.
+
+FRIDAY
+
+MY DEAR MOTHER
+
+I WAS SO GLAD TO GET YOUR LETTER I AM SO GLAD YOU WILL NOT WRITE TO MRS.
+GURLEY THIS TIME AND I WILL PROMISE TO BE VERY GOOD AND TRY TO REMEMBER
+EVERYTHING YOU TELL ME. I AM SORRY I FORGOT TO ANSWER THE QUESTIONS I
+HAVE TWO BLANKETS ON MY BED AND IT IS ENOUGH. THE FOOD IS VERY NICE FOR
+DINNER FOR TEA WE HAVE TO EAT A LOT OF BREAD AND BUTTER I DON'T CARE FOR
+BREAD MUCH. SOMETIMES WE HAVE JAM BUT WE ARE NOT ALOWED TO EAT BUTTER
+AND JAM TOGETHER. A LOT OF GIRLS GET UP AT SIX AND GO DOWN TO PRACTICE
+THEY DON'T DRESS AND HAVE THEIR BATH THEY JUST PUT ON THEIR DRESSING
+GOWNS ON TOP OF THEIR NIGHT GOWNS. I DON'T GO DOWN NOW TILL SEVEN I MAKE
+MY OWN BED. WE HAVE PRAYERS IN THE MORNING AND THE EVENING AND
+PRAYERS AGAIN WHEN THE DAY SCHOLERS COME. I DO MY SUMS BETTER NOW I
+THINK I SHALL SOON BE IN THE SECOND CLASS. PINS SPELLING WAS DREADFULL
+AND SHE IS NEARLY NINE NOW AND IS SUCH A BABY THE GIRLS WOULD LAUGH AT
+HER.
+
+I REMAIN
+
+YOUR AFECTIONATE DAUGHTER LAURA.
+
+P.S. I PARSSED A LONG SENTENCE WITHOUT ANY MISTAKES.
+
+
+
+
+VII.
+
+
+
+The mornings were beginning to grow dark and chilly: fires were laid
+overnight in the outer classrooms--and the junior governess who was on
+early duty, having pealed the six-o'clock bell, flitted like a grey
+wraith from room to room and from one gas-jet to another, among
+stretched, sleeping forms. And the few minutes' grace at an end, it was
+a cold, unwilling pack that threw off coverlets and jumped out of bed,
+to tie on petticoats and snuggle into dressing-gowns and shawls; for the
+first approach of cooler weather was keenly felt, after the summer heat.
+The governess blew on speedily chilblained fingers, in making her rounds
+of the verandahs to see that each of the twenty pianos was rightly
+occupied; and, as winter crept on, its chief outward sign an occasional
+thin white spread of frost which vanished before the mighty sun of ten
+o'clock, she sometimes took the occupancy for granted, and skipped an
+exposed room.
+
+At eight, the boarders assembled in the dining-hall for prayers and
+breakfast. After this meal it was Mrs. Gurley's custom to drink a glass
+of hot water. While she sipped, she gave audience, meting out rebukes
+and crushing complaints--were any bold enough to offer them--standing
+erect behind her chair at the head of the table, supported by one or
+more of the staff. To suit the season she was draped in a shawl of
+crimson wool, which reached to the flounce of her skirt, and was
+borne by her portly shoulders with the grace of a past day. Beneath the
+shawl, her dresses were built, year in, year out, on the same plan: cut
+in one piece, buttoning right down the front, they fitted her like an
+eelskin, rigidly outlining her majestic proportions, and always short
+enough to show a pair of surprisingly small, well-shod feet. Thus she
+stood, sipping her water, and boring with her hard, unflagging eye every
+girl that presented herself to it. Most shrank noiselessly away as soon
+as breakfast was over; for, unless one was very firm indeed in the
+conviction of one's own innocence, to be beneath this eye was apt to
+induce a disagreeable sense of guilt. In the case of Mrs. Gurley,
+familiarity had never been known to breed contempt. She was possessed of
+what was little short of genius, for ruling through fear; and no more
+fitting overseer could have been set at the head of these half-hundred
+girls, of all ages and degrees: gentle and common; ruly and unruly,
+children hardly out of the nursery, and girls well over the brink of
+womanhood, whose ripe, bursting forms told their own tale; the daughters
+of poor ministers at reduced fees; and the spoilt heiresses of wealthy
+wool-brokers and squatters, whose dowries would mount to many thousands
+of pounds.--Mrs. Gurley was equal to them all.
+
+In a very short time, there was no more persistent shrinker from the ice
+of this gaze than little Laura. In the presence of Mrs. Gurley the child
+had a difficulty in getting her breath. Her first week of school life
+had been one unbroken succession of snubs and reprimands. For this, the
+undue familiarity of her manner was to blame: she was all too
+slow to grasp--being of an impulsive disposition and not naturally shy
+--that it was indecorous to accost Mrs. Gurley off-hand, to treat her,
+indeed, in any way as if she were an ordinary mortal. The climax had
+come one morning--it still made Laura's cheeks burn to remember it. She
+had not been able to master her French lesson for that day, and seeing
+Mrs. Gurley chatting to a governess had gone thoughtlessly up to her and
+tapped her on the arm.
+
+"Mrs. Gurley, please, do you think it would matter very much if I only
+took half this verb today? It's COUDRE, and means to sew, you know, and
+it's SO hard. I don't seem to be able to get it into my head."
+
+Before the words were out of her mouth, she saw that she had made a
+terrible mistake. Mrs. Gurley's face, which had been smiling, froze to
+stone. She looked at her arm as though the hand had bitten her, and
+Laura's sudden shrinking did not move her, to whom seldom anyone
+addressed a word unbidden.
+
+"How DARE you interrupt me--when I am speaking!"--she hissed,
+punctuating her words with the ominous head-shakes and pauses. "The first
+thing, miss, for you to do, will be, to take a course of lessons, in
+manners. Your present ones, may have done well enough, in the outhouse,
+to which you have evidently belonged. They will not do, here, in the
+company of your betters."
+
+Above the child's head the two ladies smiled significantly at each
+other, assured that, after this, there would be no further want of
+respect; but Laura did not see them. The iron of the thrust went deep
+down into her soul: no one had ever yet cast a slur upon her
+home. Retreating to a lavatory she cried herself nearly sick, making her
+eyes so red that she was late for prayers in trying to wash them white.
+Since that day, she had never of her own free will approached Mrs.
+Gurley again, and even avoided those places where she was likely to be
+found. This was why one morning, some three weeks later, on discovering
+that she had forgotten one of her lesson-books, she hesitated long
+before re-entering the dining-hall. The governesses still clustered
+round their chief, and the pupils were not expected to return. But it
+was past nine o'clock; in a minute the public prayer-bell would ring,
+which united boarders, several hundred day-scholars, resident and
+visiting teachers in the largest class-room; and Laura did not know her
+English lesson. So she stole in, cautiously dodging behind the group, in
+a twitter lest the dreaded eyes should turn her way.
+
+It was Miss Day who spied her and demanded an explanation.
+
+"Such carelessness! You girls would forget your heads if they weren't
+screwed on," retorted the governess, in the dry, violent manner that
+made her universally disliked.
+
+Thankful to escape with this, Laura picked out her book and hurried from
+the room.
+
+But the thoughts of the group had been drawn to her.
+
+"The greatest little oddity we've had here for some time," pronounced
+Miss Day, pouting her full bust in decisive fashion.
+
+"She is, indeed," agreed Miss Zielinski.
+
+"I don't know what sort of a place she comes from, I'm sure,"
+continued the former: "but it must be the end of creation. She's utterly
+no idea of what's what, and as for her clothes they're fit for a Punch
+and Judy show."
+
+"She's had no training either--stupid, I call her," chimed in one of
+the younger governesses, whose name was Miss Snodgrass. "She doesn't
+know the simplest things, and her spelling is awful. And yet, do you
+know, at history the other day, she wanted to hold forth about how
+London looked in Elizabeth's reign--when she didn't know a single one
+of the dates!"
+
+"She can say some poetry," said Miss Zielinski. "And she's read Scott."
+
+One and all shook their heads at this, and Mrs. Gurley went on shaking
+hers and smiling grimly. "Ah! the way gels are brought up nowadays," she
+said. "There was no such thing in my time. We were made to learn what
+would be of some use and help to us afterwards."
+
+Elderly Miss Chapman twiddled her chain. "I hope I did right Mrs. Gurley.
+She had one week's early practice, but she looked so white all day after
+it that I haven't put her down for it again. I hope I did right?"
+
+"Oh, well, we don't want to have them ill, you know," replied Mrs.
+Gurley, in the rather irresponsive tone she adopted towards Miss
+Chapman. "As long as it isn't mere laziness."
+
+"I don't think she's lazy," said Miss Chapman. "At least she takes great
+pains with her lessons at night."
+
+This was true. Laura tried her utmost, with an industry born of
+despair. For the comforting assurance of speedy promotion, which she had
+given Mother, had no root in fact. These early weeks only served to
+reduce, bit by bit, her belief in her own knowledge. How slender this
+was, and of how little use to her in her new state, she did not dare to
+confess even to herself. Her disillusionment had begun the day after her
+arrival, when Dr Pughson, the Headmaster, to whom she had gone to be
+examined in arithmetic, flung up hands of comical dismay at her befogged
+attempts to solve the mysteries of long division. An upper class was
+taking a lesson in Euclid, and in the intervals between her mazy
+reckonings she had stolen glances at the master. A tiny little nose was
+as if squashed flat on his face, above a grotesquely expressive mouth,
+which displayed every one of a splendid set of teeth. He had small,
+short-sighted, red-rimmed eyes, and curly hair which did not stop
+growing at his ears, but went on curling, closely cropped, down the
+sides of his face. He taught at the top of his voice, thumped the
+blackboard with a pointer, was biting at the expense of a pupil who
+confused the angle BFC with the angle BFG, a moment later to volley
+forth a broad Irish joke which convulsed the class. He bewitched Laura;
+she forgot her sums in the delight of watching him; and this made her
+learning seem a little scantier than it actually was; for she had to
+wind up in a great hurry. He pounced down upon her; the class laughed
+anew at his playful horror; and yet again at the remark that it was
+evident she had never had many pennies to spend, or she would know
+better what to do with the figures that represented them.--In
+these words Laura scented a reference to Mother's small income, and grew
+as red as fire.
+
+In the lowest class in the College she sat bottom, for a week or more:
+what she did know, she knew in such an awkward form that she might as
+well have known nothing. And after a few efforts to better her condition
+she grew cautious, and hesitated discreetly before returning one of
+those ingenuous answers which, in the beginning, had made her the
+merry-andrew of the class. She could for instance, read a French
+story-book without skipping very many words; but she had never heard a
+syllable of the language spoken, and her first attempts at pronunciation
+caused even Miss Zielinski to sit back in her chair and laugh till the
+tears ran down her face. History Laura knew in a vague, pictorial way:
+she and Pin had enacted many a striking scene in the garden--such
+as "Not Angles but Angels," or, did the pump-drain overflow, Canute and
+his silly courtiers--and she also had out-of-the-way scraps of
+information about the characters of some of the monarchs, or, as the
+governess had complained, about the state of London at a certain period;
+but she had never troubled her head with dates. Now they rose before
+her, a hard, dry, black line from 1066 on, accompanied, not only by the
+kings who were the cause of them, but by dull laws, and their duller
+repeals. Her lessons in English alone gave her a mild pleasure; she
+enjoyed taking a sentence to pieces to see how it was made. She was fond
+of words, too, for their own sake, and once, when Miss Snodgrass had
+occasion to use the term "eleemosynary", Laura was so enchanted by
+it that she sought to share her enthusiasm with her neighbour. This
+girl, a fat little Jewess, went crimson, from trying to stifle her
+laughter.
+
+"What IS the matter with you girls down there?" cried Miss
+Snodgrass. "Carrie Isaacs, what are you laughing like that for?"
+
+"It's Laura Rambotham, Miss Snodgrass. She's so funny," spluttered the
+girl.
+
+"What are you doing, Laura?"
+
+Laura did not answer. The girl spoke for her.
+
+"She said--hee, hee!--she said it was blue."
+
+"Blue? What's blue?" snapped Miss Snodgrass.
+
+"That word. She said it was so beautiful . . . and that it was blue."
+
+"I didn't. Grey-blue, I said," murmured Laura her cheeks aflame. 
+
+The class rocked; even Miss Snodgrass herself had to join in the laugh
+while she hushed and reproved. And sometimes after this, when a
+particularly long or odd word occurred in the lesson, she would turn to
+Laura and say jocosely: "Now, Laura, come on, tell us what colour that
+is. Red and yellow, don't you think?"
+
+But these were "Tom Fool's colours"; and Laura kept a wise silence.
+
+One day at geography, the pupils were required to copy the outline of
+the map of England. Laura, about to begin, found to her dismay that she
+had lost her pencil. To confess the loss meant one of the hard, public
+rebukes from which she shrank. And so, while the others drew, heads and
+backs bent low over their desks, she fidgeted and sought--on her [P.72]
+lap, the bench, the floor.
+
+"What on earth's the matter?" asked her neighbour crossly; it was the
+black-haired boarder who had winked at Laura the first evening at tea;
+her name was Bertha Ramsey. "I can't draw a stroke if you shake like
+that."
+
+"I've lost my pencil."
+
+The girl considered Laura for a moment, then pushed the lid from a box
+of long, beautifully sharpened drawing-pencils. "Here, you can have one
+of these."
+
+Laura eyed the well-filled box admiringly, and modestly selected the
+shortest pencil. Bertha Ramsay, having finished her map, leaned back in
+her seat.
+
+"And next time you feel inclined to boo-hoo at the tea-table, hold on to
+your eyebrows and sing Rule Britannia.--DID it want its mummy, poor
+ickle sing?"
+
+Here Bertha's chum, a girl called Inez, chimed in from the other side.
+
+"It's all very well for you," she said to Bertha, in a deep, slow
+voice. "You're a weekly boarder."
+
+Laura had the wish to be very pleasant, in return for the pencil. So she
+drew a sigh, and said, with over-emphasis: "How nice for your mother to
+have you home every week!" 
+
+Bertha only laughed at this, in a teasing way: "Yes, isn't it?" But Inez
+leaned across behind her and gave Laura a poke.
+
+"Shut up!" she telegraphed.
+
+"Who's talking down there?" came the governess's cry. "Here you, the new
+girl, Laura what's--your-name, come up to the map."
+
+A huge map of England had been slung over an easel; Laura was required
+to take the pointer and show where Stafford lay. With the long stick in
+her hand, she stood stupid and confused. In this exigency, it did not
+help her that she knew, from hear-say, just how England looked; that she
+could see, in fancy, its ever-green grass, thick hedges, and spreading
+trees; its never-dry rivers; its hoary old cathedrals; its fogs, and
+sea-mists, and over-populous cities. She stood face to face with the
+most puzzling map in the world--a map seared and scored with
+boundary-lines, black and bristling with names. She could not have laid
+her finger on London at this moment, and as for Stafford, it might have
+been in the moon.
+
+While the class straggled along the verandah at the end of the hour,
+Inez came up to Laura's side.
+
+"I say, you shouldn't have said that about her mother." She nodded
+mysteriously.
+
+"Why not?" asked Laura, and coloured at the thought that she had again,
+without knowing it, been guilty of a FAUX PAS. 
+
+Inez looked round to see that Bertha was not within hearing, then put
+her lips to Laura's ear.
+
+"She drinks."
+
+Laura gaped incredulous at the girl, her young eyes full of horror. From
+actual experience, she hardly knew what drunkenness meant; she had
+hitherto associated it only with the lowest class of Irish agricultural
+labourer, or with those dreadful white women who lived, by choice, in
+Chinese Camps. That there could exist a mother who drank was unthinkable
+. . . outside the bounds of nature.
+
+"Oh, how awful!" she gasped, and turned pale with excitement. Inez could
+not help giggling at the effect produced by her words--the new girl was
+a 'rum stick' and no mistake--but as Laura's consternation persisted,
+she veered about
+
+"Oh, well, I don't know for certain if that's it. But there's something
+awfully queer about her."
+
+"Oh, HOW do you know?" asked her breathless listener, mastered by a
+morbid curiosity.
+
+"I've been there--at Vaucluse--from a Saturday till Monday. She came
+in to lunch, and she only talked to herself, not to us. She tried to eat
+mustard with her pudding too, and her meat was cut up in little pieces
+for her. I guess if she'd had a knife she'd have cut our throats."
+
+"Oh!" was all Laura could get out.
+
+"I was so frightened my mother said I shouldn't go again."
+
+"Oh, I hope she won't ask me. What shall I do if she does?"
+
+"Look out, here she comes! Don't say a word. Bertha's awfully ashamed of
+it," said Inez, and Laura had just time to give a hasty promise.
+
+"Hullo, you two, what are you gassing about?" cried Bertha, and dealt
+out a couple of her rough and friendly punches.--"I say, who's on for a
+race up the garden?"
+
+They raced, all three, with flying plaits and curls, much kicking-up of
+long black legs, and a frank display of frills and tuckers. Laura won;
+for Inez's wind gave out half way, and Bertha was heavy of foot.
+Leaning against the palings Laura watched the latter come puffing up to
+join her--Bertha with the shameful secret in the background, of a
+mother who was not like other mothers. 
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+
+
+Laura had been, for some six weeks or more, a listless and unsuccessful
+pupil, when one morning she received an invitation from Godmother to
+spend the coming monthly holiday--from Saturday till Monday--at
+Prahran. The month before, she had been one of the few girls who had
+nowhere to go; she had been forced to pretend that she liked staying in,
+did it in fact by preference.--Now her spirits rose.
+
+Marina, Godmother's younger daughter, from whom Laura inherited her
+school-books, was to call for her. By a little after nine o'clock on
+Saturday morning, Laura had finished her weekly mending, tidied her
+bedroom, and was ready dressed even to her gloves. It was a cool, crisp
+day; and her heart beat high with expectation.
+
+From the dining-hall, it was not possible to hear the ringing of the
+front-door bell; but each time either of the maids entered with a
+summons, Laura half rose from her chair, sure that her turn had come at
+last. But it was half-past nine, then ten, then half-past; it struck
+eleven, the best of the day was passing, and still Marina did not come.
+Only two girls besides herself remained. Then respectively an aunt and a
+mother were announced, and these two departed. Laura alone was left: she
+had to bear the disgrace of Miss Day observing: "Well, it looks as if
+YOUR friends had forgotten all about you, Laura."
+
+Humiliated beyond measure, Laura had thoughts of tearing off her
+hat and jacket and declaring that she felt too ill to go out. But at
+last, when she was almost sick with suspense, Mary put her tidy head in
+once more.
+
+"Miss Rambotham has been called for."
+
+Laura was on her feet before the words were spoken. She sped to the
+reception-room.
+
+Marina, a short, sleek-haired, soberly dressed girl of about twenty, had
+Godmother's brisk, matter-of-fact manner.
+
+She offered Laura her cheek to kiss. "Well, I suppose you're ready now?"
+
+Laura forgave her the past two hours. "Yes, quite, thank you," she
+answered.
+
+They went down the asphalted path and through the garden-gate, and
+turned to walk townwards. For the first time since her arrival Laura was
+free again--a prisoner at large. Round them stretched the broad white
+streets of East Melbourne; at their side was the thick, exotic greenery
+of the Fitzroy Gardens; on the brow of the hill rose the massive
+proportions of the Roman Catholic Cathedral.--Laura could have danced,
+as she walked at Marina's side.
+
+After a few queries, however, as to how she liked school and how she was
+getting on with her lessons, Marina fell to contemplating a strip of
+paper that she held in her hand. Laura gathered that her companion had
+combined the task of calling for her with a morning's shopping, and that
+she had only worked half through her list of commissions before arriving
+at the College. At the next corner they got on to the outside car of a
+cable-tramway, and were carried into town. Here Marina entered a
+co-operative grocery store, where she was going to give an order
+for a quarter's supplies. She was her mother's housekeeper, and had an
+incredible knowledge of groceries, as well as a severely practical mind:
+she stuck her finger-nail into butter, tasted cheeses off the blade of a
+knife, ran her hands through currants, nibbled biscuits, discussed
+brands of burgundy and desiccated soups--Laura meanwhile looking on,
+from a high, uncomfortable chair, with a somewhat hungry envy. When
+everything, down to pepper and salt, had been remembered, Marina filled
+in a cheque, and was just about to turn away when she recollected an
+affair of some empty cases, which she wished to send back. Another ten
+minutes' parley ensued; she had to see the manager, and was closeted
+with him in his office, so that by the time they emerged into the street
+again a full hour had gone by.
+
+"Getting hungry?" she inquired of Laura.
+
+"A little. But I can wait," answered Laura politely.
+
+"That's right," said Marina, off whose own appetite the edge had no
+doubt been taken by her various nibblings. "Now there's only the
+chemist."
+
+They rode to another street, entered a druggist's, and the same thing on
+a smaller scale was repeated, except that here Marina did no tasting,
+but for a stray gelatine or jujube. By the time the shop door closed
+behind them, Laura could almost have eaten liquorice powder. It was two
+o'clock, and she was faint with hunger.
+
+"We'll be home in plenty of time," said Marina, consulting a neat
+watch. "Dinner's not till three today, because of father."
+
+Again a tramway jerked them forward. Some half mile from their
+destination, Marina rose.
+
+"We'll get out here. I have to call at the butcher's."
+
+At a quarter to three, it was a very white-faced, exhausted little girl
+that followed her companion into the house.
+
+"Well, I guess you'll have a fine healthy appetite for dinner," said
+Marina, as she showed her where to hang up her hat and wash her hands.
+
+Godmother was equally optimistic. From the sofa of the morning-room,
+where she sat knitting, she said: "Well, YOU'VE had a fine morning's
+gadding about I must say! How are you? And how's your dear mother?"
+
+"Quite well, thank you."
+
+Godmother scratched her head with a spare needle, and the attention she
+had had for Laura evaporated. "I hope, Marina, you told Graves about
+those empty jam-jars he didn't take back last time?"
+
+Marina, without lifting her eyes from a letter she was reading,
+returned: "Indeed I didn't. He made such a rumpus about the sugar-boxes
+that I thought I'd try to sell them to Petersen instead."
+
+Godmother grunted, but did not question Marina's decision. "And what
+news have you from your dear mother?" she asked again, without looking
+at Laura--just as she never looked at the stocking she held, but always
+over the top of it.
+
+Here, however, the dinner-bell rang, and Laura, spared the task of
+giving more superfluous information, followed the two ladies to the
+dining-room. The other members of the family were waiting at the table.
+Godmother's husband--he was a lawyer--was a morose, black-bearded man
+who, for the most part, kept his eyes fixed on his plate. Laura
+had heard it said that he and Godmother did not get on well together;
+she supposed this meant that they did not care to talk to each other,
+for they never exchanged a direct word: if they had to communicate, it
+was done by means of a third person. There was the elder daughter,
+Georgina, dumpier and still brusquer than Marina, the eldest son, a
+bank-clerk who was something of a dandy and did not waste civility on
+little girls; and lastly there were two boys, slightly younger than
+Laura, black-haired, pug-nosed, pugnacious little creatures, who stood
+in awe of their father, and were all the wilder when not under his eye.
+
+Godmother mumbled a blessing; and the soup was eaten in silence.
+
+During the meat course, the bank-clerk complained in extreme displeasure
+of the way the laundress had of late dressed his collars--these were so
+high that, as Laura was not slow to notice, he had to look straight down
+the two sides of his nose to see his plate--and announced that he would
+not be home for tea, as he had an appointment to meet some 'chappies' at
+five, and in the evening was going to take a lady friend to Brock's
+Fireworks. These particulars were received without comment. As the
+family plied its pudding-spoons, Georgina in her turn made a statement.
+
+"Joey's coming to take me driving at four."
+
+It looked as if this remark, too, would founder on the general
+indifference. Then Marina said warningly, as if recalling her parent's
+thoughts: "Mother!"
+
+Awakened, Godmother jerked out: "Indeed and I hope if you go you'll take
+the boys with you!"
+
+"Indeed and I don't see why we should!"
+
+"Very well, then, you'll stop at home. If Joey doesn't choose to come to
+the point-----"
+
+"Now hold your tongue, mother!"
+
+"I'll do nothing of the sort."
+
+"Crikey!" said the younger boy, Erwin, in a low voice. "Joey's got to
+take us riding."
+
+"If you and Joey can't get yourselves properly engaged," snapped
+Godmother, "then you shan't go driving without the boys, and that's the
+end of it."
+
+Like dogs barking at one another, thought Laura, listening to the
+loveless bandying of words--she was unused to the snappishness of the
+Irish manner, which sounds so much worse than it is meant to be: and she
+was chilled anew by it when, over the telephone, she heard Georgy
+holding a heated conversation with Joey.
+
+He was a fat young man, with hanging cheeks, small eyes, and a lazy,
+lopsided walk.
+
+"Hello--here's a little girl! What's HER name?--Say, this kiddy can
+come along too."
+
+As it had leaked out that Marina's afternoon would be spent between the
+shelves of her storeroom, preparing for the incoming goods, Laura
+gratefully accepted the offer.
+
+They drove to Marlborough Tower. With their backs to the horse sat the
+two boys, mercilessly alert for any display of fondness on the part of
+the lovers; sat Laura, with her straight, inquisitive black eyes. Hence
+Joey and Georgy were silent, since, except to declare their feelings,
+they had nothing to say to each other.
+
+The Tower reached, the mare was hitched up and the ascent of the
+light wooden erection began. It was a blowy day.
+
+"Boys first!" commanded Joey. "Cos o' the petticuts."--His speech was as
+lazy as his walk.
+
+He himself led the way, followed by Erwin and Marmaduke, and Laura, at
+Georgy's bidding, went next. She clasped her bits of skirts anxiously to
+her knees, for she was just as averse to the frills and flounces that
+lay beneath being seen by Georgy, as by any of the male members of the
+party. Georgy came last, and, though no one was below her, so tightly
+wound about was she that she could hardly advance her legs from one step
+to another. Joey looked approval; but the boys sniggered, and kept it up
+till Georgy, having gained the platform, threatened them with a "clout on
+the head".
+
+On the return journey a dispute arose between the lovers: it related to
+the shortest road home, waxed hot, and was rapidly taking on the
+dimensions of a quarrel, when the piebald mare shied at a
+traction-engine and tried to bolt. Joey gripped the reins, and passed
+his free arm round Georgy's waist.
+
+"Don't be frightened, darling."
+
+Though the low chaise rocked from side to side and there seemed a
+likelihood of it capsizing, the two boys squirmed with laughter, and
+dealt out sundry nudges, kicks and pokes, all of which were received by
+Laura, sitting between them. She herself turned red--with
+embarrassment. At the same time she wondered why Joey should believe
+George was afraid; there was no sign of it in Georgy's manner; she sat
+stolid and unmoved. Besides she, Laura, was only a little girl, and felt
+no fear.--She also asked herself why Joey should suddenly grow
+concerned about Georgy, when, a moment before, they had been so rude to
+each other.--These were interesting speculations, and, the chaise
+having ceased to sway, Laura grew meditative.
+
+In the evening Godmother had a visitor, and Laura sat in a low chair,
+listening to the ladies' talk. It was dull work: for, much as she liked
+to consider herself "almost grown up", she yet detested the conversation
+of "real grown-ups" with a child's heartiness. She was glad when nine
+o'clock struck and Marina, lighting a candle, told her to go to bed.
+
+The next day was Sunday. Between breakfast and church-time yawned two
+long hours. Georgy went to a Bible-class; Marina was busy with orders
+for the dinner.
+
+It was a bookless house--like most Australian houses of its kind: in
+Marina's bedroom alone stood a small bookcase containing school and
+Sunday school prizes. Laura was very fond of reading, and as she dressed
+that morning had cast longing looks at these volumes, had evenly shyly
+fingered the glass doors. But they were locked. Breakfast over, she
+approached Marina on the subject. The latter produced the key, but only
+after some haggling, for her idea of books was to keep the gilt on their
+covers untarnished.
+
+"Well, at any rate it must be a Sunday book," she said ungraciously.
+
+She drew out THE GIANT CITIES OF BASHAN AND SYRIA'S HOLY PLACES, and
+with this Laura retired to the drawing-room, where Godmother was already
+settled for the day, with a suitable magazine. When the bells began to
+clang the young people, primly hatted, their prayer-books in
+their hands, walked to the neighbouring church. There Laura sat once
+more between the boys, Marina and Georgy stationed like sentinels at the
+ends of the pew, ready to pounce down on their brothers if necessary, to
+confiscate animals and eatables, or to rap impish knuckles with a Bible.
+It was a spacious church; the pew was in a side aisle; one could see
+neither reading-desk nor pulpit; and the words of the sermon seemed to
+come from a great way off.
+
+After dinner, Laura and the boys were dispatched to the garden, to
+stroll about in Sunday fashion. Here no elder person being present, the
+natural feelings of the trio came out: the distaste of a quiet little
+girl for rough boys and their pranks; the resentful indignation of the
+boys at having their steps dogged by a sneak and a tell-tale. As soon as
+they had rounded the tennis-court and were out of sight of the house,
+Erwin and Marmaduke clambered over the palings and dropped into the
+street, vowing a mysterious vengeance on Laura if she went indoors
+without them. The child sat down on the edge of the lawn under a
+mulberry tree and propped her chin on her hands. She was too timid to
+return to the house and brave things out; she was also afraid of some
+one coming into the garden and finding her alone, and of her then being
+forced to "tell"; for most of all she feared the boys, and their vague,
+rude threats. So she sat and waited . . . and waited. The shadows on the
+grass changed their shapes before her eyes; distant chapel-bells tinkled
+their quarter of an hour and were still again; the blighting torpor of a
+Sunday afternoon lay over the world. Would to-morrow ever come? She
+counted on her fingers the hours that had still to crawl by
+before she could get back to school--counted twice over to be sure of
+them--and all but yawned her head off, with ennui. But time passed, and
+passed, and nothing happened. She was on the verge of tears, when two
+black heads bobbed up above the fence, the boys scrambled over, red and
+breathless, and hurried her into tea.
+
+She wakened next morning at daybreak, so eager was she to set out. But
+Marina had a hundred and one odd jobs to do before she was ready to
+start, and it struck half-past nine as the two of them neared the
+College. Child-like, Laura felt no special gratitude for the heavy pot
+of mulberry jam Marina bore on her arm; but at sight of the stern, grey,
+stone building she could have danced with joy; and on the front door
+swinging to behind her, she drew a deep sigh of relief. 
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+
+
+From this moment on--the moment when Mary the maid's pleasant smile
+saluted her--Laura's opinion of life at school suffered a change. She
+was glad to be back--that was the first point: just as an adventurous
+sheep is glad to regain the cover of the flock. Learning might be hard;
+the governesses mercilessly secure in their own wisdom; but here she was
+at least a person of some consequence, instead of as at Godmother's a
+mere negligible null.
+
+Of her unlucky essay at holiday-making she wrote home guardedly: the
+most tell-tale sentence in her letter was that in which she said she
+would rather not go to Godmother's again in the meantime. But there was
+such a lack of warmth in her account of the visit that mother made this,
+together with the above remark, the text for a scolding.
+
+"YOU'RE A VERY UNGRATEFUL GIRL," she wrote, "TO FORGET ALL GODMOTHER HAS
+DONE FOR YOU. IF IT HADN'T BEEN FOR HER SUPPLYING YOU WITH BOOKS AND
+THINGS I COULDN'T HAVE SENT YOU TO SCHOOL AT ALL. AND I HOPE WHEN YOU
+GROW UP YOU'LL BE AS MUCH OF A HELP TO ME AS MARINA IS TO HER MOTHER.
+I'D MUCH RATHER HAVE YOU GOOD AND USEFUL THAN CLEVER AND I THINK FOR A
+CHILD OF YOUR AGE YOU SEE THINGS WITH VERY SHARP UNKIND EYES. TRY AND
+ONLY THINK NICE THINGS ABOUT PEOPLE AND NOT BE ALWAYS SPYING OUT THEIR
+FAULTS. THEN YOU'LL HAVE PLENTY OF FRIENDS AND BE LIKED WHEREVER YOU
+GO."
+
+Laura took the statement about the goodness and cleverness with a
+grain of salt: she knew better. Mother thought it the proper thing to
+say, and she would certainly have preferred the two qualities combined;
+but, had she been forced to choose between them, there was small doubt
+how her choice would have fallen out. And if, for instance, Laura
+confessed that her teachers did not regard her as even passably
+intelligent, there would be a nice to-do. Mother's ambitions knew no
+bounds; and, wounded in these, she was quite capable of writing
+post-haste to Mrs. Gurley or Mr. Strachey, complaining of their want of
+insight, and bringing forward a string of embarrassing proofs. So,
+leaving Mother to her pleasing illusions, Laura settled down again to
+her role of dunce, now, though, with more equanimity than before. School
+was really not a bad place after all--this had for some time been her
+growing conviction, and the visit to Godmother seemed to bring it to a
+head.
+
+About this time, too, a couple of pieces of good fortune came her way.
+
+The first: she was privileged to be third in the friendship between Inez
+and Bertha--a favour of which she availed herself eagerly, though the
+three were as different from one another as three little girls could be.
+Bertha was a good-natured romp, hard-fisted, thick of leg, and of a
+plodding but ineffectual industry. Inez, on the other hand, was so
+pretty that Laura never tired of looking at her: she had a pale skin,
+hazel eyes, brown hair with a yellow light in it, and a Greek nose. Her
+mouth was very small; her nostrils were mere tiny slits; and so lazy was
+she that she seldom more than half opened her eyes. Both girls
+were well over fourteen, and very fully developed: compared with them,
+Laura was like nothing so much as a skinny young colt.
+
+She was so grateful to them for tolerating her that she never took up a
+stand of real equality with them: proud and sensitive, she was always
+ready to draw back and admit their prior rights to each other; hence the
+friendship did not advance to intimacy. But such as it was, it was very
+comforting; she no longer needed to sit alone in recess; she could link
+arms and walk the garden with complacency; and many were the
+supercilious glances she now threw at Maria Morell and that clique; for
+her new friends belonged socially to the best set in the school.
+
+In another way, too, their company made things easier for her: neither
+of them aimed high; and both were well content with the lowly places
+they occupied in the class. And so Laura, who was still, in her young
+confusion, unequal to discovering what was wanted of her, grew comforted
+by the presence and support of her friends, and unmindful of higher
+opinion; and Miss Chapman, in supervising evening lessons, remarked with
+genuine regret that little Laura was growing perky and lazy.
+
+Her second piece of good luck was of quite a different nature. 
+
+Miss Hicks, the visiting governess for geography, had a gift for saying
+biting things that really bit. She bore Inez a peculiar grudge; for she
+believed that certain faculties slumbered behind the Grecian profile,
+and that only the girl's ingrained sloth prevented them.
+
+One day she lost patience with this sluggish pupil.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is, Inez," she said; "you're blessed with a
+real woman's brain: vague, slippery, inexact, interested only in the
+personal aspect of a thing. You can't concentrate your thoughts, and,
+worst of all, you've no curiosity--about anything that really matters.
+You take all the great facts of existence on trust--just as a hen does
+--and I've no doubt you'll go on contentedly till the end of your days,
+without ever knowing why the ocean has tides, and what causes the
+seasons.--It makes me ashamed to belong to the same sex."
+
+Inez's classmates tittered furiously, let the sarcasm glide over them,
+unhit by its truth. Inez herself, indeed, was inclined to consider the
+governess's taunt a compliment, as proving that she was incapable of a
+vulgar inquisitiveness. But Laura, though she laughed docilely with the
+rest, could not forget the incident--words in any case had a way of
+sticking to her memory--and what Miss Hicks had said often came back to
+her, in the days that followed. And then, all of a sudden, just as if an
+invisible hand had opened the door to an inner chamber, a light broke on
+her. Vague, slippery, inexact, interested only in the personal--every
+word struck home. Had Miss Hicks set out to describe HER, in particular,
+she could not have done it more accurately. It was but too true: until
+now, she, Laura, had been satisfied to know things in a slipslop,
+razzle-dazzle way, to know them anyhow, as it best suited herself. She
+had never set to work to master a subject, to make it her own in every
+detail. Bits of it, picturesque scraps, striking features--what Miss
+Hicks no doubt meant by the personal--were all that had attracted her.
+--Oh, and she, too, had no intelligent curiosity. She could not
+say that she had ever teased her brains with wondering why the earth
+went round the sun and not the sun round the earth. Honestly speaking,
+it made no difference to her that the globe was indented like an orange,
+and not the perfect round you began by believing it to be.--But if this
+were so, if she were forced to make these galling admissions, then it
+was clear that her vaunted cleverness had never existed, except in
+Mother's imagination. Or, at any rate, it had crumbled to pieces like a
+lump of earth, under the hard, heavy hand of Miss Hicks. Laura felt
+humiliated, and could not understand her companions treating the matter
+so airily. She did not want to have a woman's brain, thank you; not one
+of that sort; and she smarted for the whole class.
+
+Straightway she set to work to sharpen her wits, to follow the strait
+road. At first with some stumbling, of course, and frequent
+backslidings. Intellectual curiosity could not, she discovered, be
+awakened to order; and she often caught herself napping. Thus though she
+speedily became one of the most troublesome askers-why, her desire for
+information was apt to exhaust itself in putting the question, and she
+would forget to listen to the answer. Besides, for the life of her she
+could not drum up more interest in, say, the course of the Gulf Stream,
+or the formation of a plateau, than in the fact that, when Nelly Bristow
+spoke, little bubbles came out of her mouth, and that she needed to
+swallow twice as often as other people; or that when Miss Hicks grew
+angry her voice had a way of failing, at the crucial moment, and
+flattening out to nothing--just as if one struck tin after
+brass. No, it was indeed difficult for Laura to invert the value of
+these things.--In another direction she did better. By dint of close
+attention, of pondering both the questions asked by Miss Hicks, and the
+replies made by the cleverest pupils, she began to see more clearly
+where true knowledge lay. It was facts that were wanted of her; facts
+that were the real test of learning; facts she was expected to know.
+Stories, pictures of things, would not help her an inch along the road.
+Thus, it was not the least use in the world to her to have seen the
+snowy top of Mount Kosciusko stand out against a dark blue evening sky,
+and to know its shape to a tittlekin. On the other hand, it mattered
+tremendously that this mountain was 7308 and not 7309 feet high: that
+piece of information was valuable, was of genuine use to you; for it was
+worth your place in the class.
+
+Thus did Laura apply herself to reach the school ideal, thus force
+herself to drive hard nails of fact into her vagrant thoughts. And with
+success. For she had, it turned out, a retentive memory, and to her joy
+learning by heart came easy to her--as easy as to the most brilliant
+scholars in the form. From now on she gave this talent full play,
+memorising even pages of the history book in her zeal; and before many
+weeks had passed, in all lessons except those in arithmetic--you could
+not, alas! get sums by rote--she was separated from Inez and Bertha by
+the width of the class.
+
+But neither her taste of friendship and its comforts, nor the abrupt
+change for the better in her class-fortunes, could counterbalance
+Laura's luckless knack of putting her foot in it. This she continued to
+do, in season and out of season. And not with the authorities
+alone.
+
+There was, for instance, that unfortunate evening when she was one of
+the batch of girls invited to Mrs. Strachey's drawingroom. Laura,
+ignorant of what it meant to be blasee, had received her note of
+invitation with a thrill, had even enjoyed writing, in her best hand,
+the prescribed formula of acceptance. But she was alone in this; by the
+majority of her companions these weekly parties were frankly hated, the
+chief reason being that every guest was expected to take a piece of
+music with her. Even the totally unfit had to show what they could do.
+And the fact that cream-tarts were served for supper was not held to
+square accounts.
+
+"It's all very well for you," grumbled Laura's room-mate, Lilith Gordon,
+as she lathered her thick white arms and neck before dressing. "You're a
+new girl; you probably won't be asked."
+
+Laura did not give the matter a second thought: hastily selecting a
+volume of music, she followed the rest of the white dresses into the
+passage. The senior girl tapped at the drawingroom door. It was opened
+by no other than the Principal himself.
+
+In the girls' eyes, Mr. Strachey stood over six feet in his
+stocking-soles. He had also a most arrogant way of looking down his
+nose, and of tugging, intolerantly, at his long, drooping moustache.
+There was little need for him to assume the frigid contemptuousness of
+Mrs. Gurley's manner: his mere presence, the very unseeingness of his
+gaze, inspired awe. Tales ran of his wrath, were it roused; but few had
+experienced it. He quelled the high spirits of these young [P.93]
+colonials by his dignified air of detachment.
+
+Now, however, he stood there affable and smiling, endeavouring to put a
+handful of awkward girls at their ease. But neither his nor Mrs.
+Strachey's efforts availed. It was impossible for the pupils to throw
+off, at will, the crippling fear that governed their relations with the
+Principal. To them, his amiability resembled the antics of an
+uncertain-tempered elephant, with which you could never feel safe.--
+Besides on this occasion it was a young batch, and of particularly mixed
+stations. And so a dozen girls, from twelve to fifteen years old, sat on
+the extreme edges of their chairs, and replied to what was said to them,
+with dry throats.
+
+Though the youngest of the party, Laura was the least embarrassed: she
+had never known a nursery, but had mixed with her elders since her
+babyhood. And she was not of a shy disposition; indeed, she still had to
+be reminded daily that shyness was expected of her. So she sat and
+looked about her. It was an interesting room in which she found herself.
+Low bookshelves, three shelves high, ran round the walls, and on the top
+shelf were many outlandish objects. What an evening it would have been
+had Mr. Strachey invited them to examine these ornaments, or to handle
+the books, instead of having to pick up a title here and there by
+chance.--From the shelves, her eyes strayed to the pictures on the
+walls; one, in particular struck her fancy. It hung over the
+mantelpiece, and was a man's head seen in profile, with a long hooked
+nose, and wearing a kind of peaked cap. But that was not all: behind
+this head were other profiles of the same face, and seeming to come out
+of clouds. Laura stared hard, but could make nothing of it.--And
+meanwhile her companions were rising with sickly smiles, to seat
+themselves, red as turkey-cocks' combs, on the piano stool, where with
+cold, stiff fingers they stumbled through the movement of a sonata or
+sonatina.
+
+It was Lilith Gordon who broke the chain by offering to sing. The
+diversion was welcomed by Mrs. Strachey, and Lilith went to the piano.
+But her nervousness was such that she broke down half-way in the little
+prelude to the ballad. 
+
+Mrs. Strachey came to the rescue. "It's so difficult, is it not, to
+accompany oneself?" she said kindly. "Perhaps one of the others would
+play for you?"
+
+No one moved.
+
+"Do any of you know the song?"
+
+Two or three ungraciously admitted the knowledge, but none volunteered.
+
+It was here Laura chimed in. "I could play it," she said; and coloured at
+the sound of her own voice.
+
+Mrs. Strachey looked doubtfully at the thin little girl. "Do you know it,
+dear? You're too young for singing, I think."
+
+"No, I don't know it. But I could play it from sight. It's quite easy."
+
+Everyone looked disbelieving, especially the unhappy singer.
+
+"I've played much harder things than that," continued Laura.
+
+"Well, perhaps you might try," said Mrs. Strachey, with the ingrained
+distrust of the unmusical.
+
+Laura rose and went to the piano, where she conducted the song to a
+successful ending.
+
+Mrs. Strachey looked relieved. "Very nice indeed." And to Laura:
+"Did you say you didn't know it, dear?"
+
+"No, I never saw it before."
+
+Again the lady looked doubtful. "Well, perhaps you would play us
+something yourself now?"
+
+Laura had no objection; she had played to people before her fingers were
+long enough to cover the octave. She took the volume of Thalberg she had
+brought with her, selected "Home, Sweet Home", and pranced in.
+
+Her audience kept utter silence; but, had she been a little sharper, she
+would have grasped that it was the silence of amazement. After the prim
+sonatinas that had gone before, Thalberg's florid ornaments had a
+shameless sound. Her performance, moreover, was a startling one; the
+forte pedal was held down throughout; the big chords were crashed and
+banged with all the strength a pair of twelve-year-old arms could put
+into them; and wrong notes were freely scattered. Still, rhythm and
+melody were well marked, and there was no mistaking the agility of the
+small fingers.
+
+Dead silence, too, greeted the conclusion of the piece Several girls
+were very red, from trying not to laugh. The Principal tugged at his
+moustache, in abstracted fashion. 
+
+Laura had reached her seat again before Mrs. Strachey said
+undecidedly: "Thank you, dear. Did you . . . hm . . . learn that piece
+here?"
+
+Laura saw nothing wrong. "Oh, no, at home," she answered. "I wouldn't care
+to play the things I learn here, to people. They're so dull."
+
+A girl emitted a faint squeak. But a half turn of Mrs. Strachey's
+head subdued her. "Oh, I hope you will soon get to like classical music
+also," said the lady gravely, and in all good faith. "We prefer it, you
+know, to any other."
+
+"Do you mean things like the AIR IN G WITH VARIATIONS? I'm afraid I
+never shall. There's no tune in them."
+
+Music was as fatal to Laura's equilibrium as wine would have been.
+Finding herself next Mr. Strachey, she now turned to him and said, with
+what she believed to be ease of manner: "Mr. Strachey, will you please
+tell me what that picture is hanging over the mantelpiece? I've been
+looking at it ever since I came in, but I can't make it out. Are those
+ghosts, those things behind the man, or what?"
+
+It took Mr. Strachey a minute to recover from his astonishment. He
+stroked hard, and the look he bent on Laura was not encouraging.
+
+"It seems to be all the same face," continued the child, her eyes on the
+picture.
+
+"That," said Mr. Strachey, with extreme deliberation: "that is the
+portrait, by a great painter, of a great poet--Dante Alighieri."
+
+"Oh, Dante, is it?" said Laura showily--she had once heard the
+name. "Oh, yes, of course, I know now. He wrote a book, didn't he, called
+FAUST? I saw it over there by the door.--What lovely books!"
+
+But here Mr. Strachey abruptly changed his seat, and Laura's thirst for
+information was left unquenched.
+
+The evening passed, and she was in blessed ignorance of anything being
+amiss, till the next morning after breakfast she was bidden to
+Mrs. Gurley.
+
+A quarter of an hour later, on her emerging from that lady's private
+sitting-room, her eyes were mere swollen slits in her face. Instead,
+however, of sponging them in cold water and bravely joining her friends,
+Laura was still foolish enough to hide and have her cry out. So that
+when the bell rang, she was obliged to go in to public prayers looking a
+prodigious fright, and thereby advertising to the curious what had taken
+place.
+
+Mrs. Gurley had crushed and humiliated her. Laura learnt that she had
+been guilty of a gross impertinence, in profaning the ears of the
+Principal and Mrs. Strachey with Thalberg's music, and that all the
+pieces she had brought with her from home would now be taken from her.
+Secondly, Mr. Strachey had been so unpleasantly impressed by the
+boldness of her behaviour, that she would not be invited to the
+drawing-room again for some time to come.
+
+The matter of the music touched Laura little: if they preferred their
+dull old exercises to what she had offered them, so much the worse for
+them. But the reproach cast on her manners stung her even more deeply
+than it had done when she was still the raw little newcomer: for she had
+been pluming herself of late that she was now "quite the thing".
+
+And yet, painful as was this fresh overthrow of her pride, it was
+neither the worst nor the most lasting result of the incident. That
+concerned her schoolfellows. By the following morning the tale of her
+doings was known to everyone. It was circulated in the first place, no
+doubt, by Lilith Gordon, who bore her a grudge for her offer to
+accompany the song: had Laura not put herself forward in this
+objectionable way, Lilith might have escaped singing altogether. Lilith
+also resented her having shown that she could do it--and this feeling
+was generally shared. It evidenced a want of good-fellowship, and made
+you very glad the little prig had afterwards come to grief: if you had
+abilities that others had not you concealed them, instead of parading
+them under people's noses.
+
+In short, Laura had committed a twofold breach of school etiquette. No
+one of course vouchsafed to explain this to her; these things one did
+not put into words, things you were expected to know without telling.
+Hence, she never more than half understood what she had done. She only
+saw disapproval painted on faces that had hitherto been neutral, and
+from one or two quarters got what was unmistakably the cold shoulder.--
+Her little beginnings at popularity had somehow received a setback, and
+through her own foolish behaviour. 
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+
+
+The lesson went home; Laura began to model herself more and more on
+those around her; to grasp that the unpardonable sin is to vary from the
+common mould.
+
+In August, after the midwinter holidays, she was promoted to the second
+class; she began Latin; and as a reward was allowed by Mother to wear
+her dresses an inch below her knees. She became a quick, adaptable
+pupil, with a parrot-like memory, and at the end of the school year
+delighted Mother's heart with a couple of highly gilt volumes, of
+negligible contents.
+
+At home, during those first holidays, she gave her sister and brothers
+cold creeps down their spines, with her stories of the great doings that
+took place at school; and none of her class-mates would have recognised
+in this arrant drawer-of-the-long-bow, the unlucky little blunderbuss of
+the early days.
+
+On her return, Laura's circle of friends was enlarged. The morning after
+her arrival, on entering the dining-hall, she found a new girl standing
+shy and awkward before the fireplace. This was the daughter of a
+millionaire squatter named Macnamara; and the report of her father's
+wealth had preceded her. Yet here she now had to hang about, alone,
+unhappy, the target of all eyes. It might be supposed that Laura would
+feel some sympathy for her, having so recently undergone the same
+experience herself. But that was not her way. She rejoiced, in
+barbarian fashion, that this girl, older than she by about a year, and
+of a higher social standing, should have to endure a like ordeal.
+Staring heartlessly, she accentuated her part of old girl knowing all
+the ropes, and was so inclined to show off that she let herself in for a
+snub from Miss Snodgrass.
+
+Tilly Macnamara joined Laura's class, and the two were soon good
+friends.
+
+Tilly was a short, plump girl, with white teeth, rather boyish hands,
+and the blue-grey eyes predominant in Australia. She was usually dressed
+in silk, and she never wore an apron to protect the front of her frock.
+Naturally, too, she had a bottomless supply of pocket-money: if a
+subscription were raised, she gave ten shillings where others gave one;
+and on the Saturday holidays she flung about with half-crowns as Laura
+would have been afraid to do with pennies.
+
+For the latter with her tiny dole, which had to last so and so long,
+since no more was forthcoming, it was a difficult task to move
+gracefully among companions none of whom knew what it meant to be really
+poor. Many trivial mortifications were the result; and countless small
+subterfuges had to be resorted to, to prevent it leaking out just how
+paltry her allowance was.
+
+But the question of money was, after all, trifling, compared with the
+infinitely more important one of dress.
+
+With regard to dress, Laura's troubles were manifold. It was not only
+that here, too, by reason of Mother's straitened means, she was forced
+to remain an outsider: that, in itself, she would have borne [P.101]
+lightly; for, as little girls go, she was indifferent to finery. Had she
+had a couple of new frocks a year, in which she could have been neat and
+unremarkable, she would have been more than content. But, from her
+babyhood on, Laura--and Pin with her--had lamented the fact that
+children could not go about clad in sacks, mercifully indistinguishable
+one from another. For they were the daughters of an imaginative mother,
+and, balked in other outlets, this imagination had wreaked itself on
+their clothing. All her short life long, Laura had suffered under a
+home-made, picturesque style of dress; and she had resented, with a
+violence even Mother did not gauge, this use of her young body as a peg
+on which to hang fantastic garments. After her tenth birthday she was,
+she thanked goodness, considered too old for the quaint shapes beneath
+which Pin still groaned; but there remained the matter of colour for
+Mother to sin against, and in this she seemed to grow more intemperate
+year by year. Herself dressed always in the soberest browns and blacks,
+she liked to see her young flock gay as Paradise birds, lighting up a
+drab world; and when Mother liked a thing, she was not given to
+consulting the wishes of little people. Those were awful times when she
+went, say, to Melbourne, and bought as a bargain a whole roll of cloth
+of an impossible colour, which had to be utilised to the last inch; or
+when she unearthed, from an old trunk, some antiquated garment to be cut
+up and reshaped--a Paisley shawl, a puce ball-dress, even an old pair
+of green rep curtains.
+
+It was thus a heavy blow to Laura to find, on going home, that Mother
+had already bought her new spring dress. In one respect all was
+well: it had been made by the local dressmaker, and consequently had not
+the home-made cut that Laura abhorred. But the colour! Her heart fell to
+the pit of her stomach the moment she set eyes on it, and only with
+difficulty did she restrain her tears.--Mother had chosen a vivid
+purple, of a crude, old-fashioned shade.
+
+Now, quite apart from her personal feelings, Laura had come to know very
+exactly, during the few months she had been at school, the views held by
+her companions on the subject of colour. No matter how sumptuous or how
+simple the material of which the dress was made, it must be dark, or of
+a delicate tint. Brilliancy was a sign of vulgarity, and put the wearer
+outside the better circles. Hence, at this critical juncture, when Laura
+was striving to ape her fellows in all vital matters, the unpropitious
+advent of the purple threatened to undo her.
+
+After her first dismayed inspection, she retreated to the bottom of the
+garden to give vent to her feelings.
+
+"I shall never be able to wear it," she moaned. "Oh, how COULD she buy
+such a thing? And I needed a new dress so awfully, awfully much."
+
+"It isn't really so bad, Laura," pleaded Pin. "It'll look darker, I'm
+sure, if you've got it on--and if you don't go out in the sun."
+
+"You haven't got to wear it. It was piggish of you, Pin, perfectly
+piggish! You MIGHT have watched what she was buying."
+
+"I did, Laura!" asseverated Pin, on the brink of tears. "There was a nice
+dark brown and I said take that, you would like it better, and she said
+hold your tongue, and did I think she was going to dress you as
+if you were your own grandmother."
+
+This dress hung for weeks in the most private corner of Laura's school
+wardrobe. Her companions had all returned with new outfits, and on the
+first assemblage for church there was a great mustering of one another,
+both by girls and teachers. Laura was the only one to descend in the
+dress she had worn throughout the winter. Her heart was sore with
+bitterness, and when the handful of Episcopalians were marching to St
+Stephen's-on-the-Hill, she strove to soothe her own wound.
+
+"I can't think why my dress hasn't come," she said gratuitously, out of
+this hurt, with an oblique glance to see how her partner took the
+remark: it was the good-natured Maria Morell, who was resplendent in
+velvet and feathers. "I expect that stupid dressmaker couldn't get it
+done in time. I've waited for it all the week."
+
+"What a sell!" said Maria, but with mediocre interest; for she had
+cocked her eye at a harmless-looking youth, who was doing his best not
+to blush on passing the line of girls.--"I say, do look at that toff
+making eyes. Isn't he a nanny-goat."
+
+On several subsequent Sundays, Laura fingered, in an agony of
+indecision, the pleasing stuff of the dress, and ruefully considered its
+modish cut. Once, no one being present, she even took it out of the
+wardrobe. But the merciless spring sunshine seemed to make the purple
+shoot fire, to let loose a host of other colours it in as well, and,
+with a shudder, she re-hung it on its peg.
+
+But the evil day came. After a holiday at Godmother's, she
+received a hot letter from Mother. Godmother had complained of her
+looking "dowdy", and Mother was exceedingly cross. Laura was ordered to
+spend the coming Saturday as well at Prahran, and in her new dress,
+under penalty of a correspondence with Mrs. Gurley. There was no going
+against an order of this kind, and with death at her heart Laura
+prepared to obey. On the fatal morning she dawdled as long as possible
+over her mending, thus postponing dressing to go out till the others had
+vacated the bedroom; where, in order not to be forced to see herself,
+she kept her eyes half shut, and turned the looking-glass hind-before.
+Although it was a warm day, she hung a cloak over her shoulders. But her
+arms peeped out of the loose sleeves, and at least a foot of skirt was
+visible. As she walked along the corridor and down the stairs, she
+seemed to smudge the place with colour, and, directly she entered the
+dining-hall, comet-like she drew all eyes upon her. Astonished
+titterings followed in her wake; even the teachers goggled her,
+afterwards to put their heads together. In the reception-room Marina
+remarked at once: "Hullo!--is THIS the new dress your mother wrote us
+about?"
+
+Outside, things were no better; the very tram-conductors were fascinated
+by it; and every passer-by was a fresh object of dread: Laura waited,
+her heart a-thump, for the moment when he should raise his eyes and,
+with a start of attention, become aware of the screaming colour. At
+Godmother's all the faces disapproved: Georgina said, "What a guy!" when
+she thought Laura was out of earshot; but the boys stated their
+opinion openly as soon as they had her to themselves.
+
+"Oh, golly! Like a parrot--ain't she?"
+
+"This way to the purple parrot--this way! Step up, ladies and
+gentlemen! A penny the whole show!"
+
+That evening, she tore the dress from her back and, hanging it up inside
+the cloak, vowed that, come what might, she would never put it on again.
+A day or two later, on unexpectedly entering her bedroom, she found
+Lilith Gordon and another girl at her wardrobe. They grew very red, and
+hurried giggling from the room, but Laura had seen what they were
+looking at. After this, she tied the dress up with string and brown
+paper and hid it in a drawer, under her nightgowns. When she went home
+at Christmas it went with her, still in the parcel, and then there was a
+stormy scene. But Laura was stubborn: rather than wear the dress, she
+would not go back to the College at all. Mother's heart had been
+softened by the prizes; Laura seized the occasion, and extracted a
+promise that she should be allowed in future to choose her own frocks.--
+And so the purple dress was passed on to Pin, who detested it with equal
+heartiness, but, living under Mother's eye, had not the spirit to fight
+against it.
+
+"Got anything new in the way of clothes?" asked Lilith Gordon as she and
+Laura undressed for bed a night or two after their return.
+
+"Yes, one," said Laura shortly.--For she thought Lilith winked at the
+third girl, a publican's daughter from Clunes.
+
+"Another like the last? Or have you gone in for yellow ochre this time?"
+
+Laura flamed in silence.
+
+"Great Scott, what a colour that was! Fit for an Easter Fair--Miss Day
+said so."
+
+"It wasn't mine," retorted Laura passionately. "It . . . it belonged to a
+girl I knew who died--and her mother gave it to me as a remembrance of
+her--but I didn't care for it."
+
+"I shouldn't think you did.--But I say, does your mother let you wear
+other people's clothes? What a rummy thing to do!"
+
+She went out of the room--no doubt to spread this piece of gossip
+further. Laura looked daggers after her. She was angry enough with
+Lilith for having goaded her to the lie, but much angrier with herself
+for its blundering ineffectualness. It was not likely she had been
+believed, and if she were, well, it made matters worse instead of
+better: people would conclude that she lived on charity. Always when
+unexpectedly required to stand on the defensive, she said or did
+something foolish. That morning, for instance, a similar thing had
+happened--it had rankled all day in her mind. On looking through the
+washing, Miss Day had exclaimed in horror at the way in which her
+stockings were mended.
+
+"Whoever did it? They've been done since you left here. I would never
+have passed such dams."
+
+Laura crimsoned. "Those? Oh, an old nurse we've got at home. We've had
+her for years and years--but her eyesight's going now."
+
+Miss Day sniffed audibly. "So I should think. To cobble like that!"
+
+They were Mother's dams, hastily made, late at night, and with all
+Mother's genial impatience at useful sewing as opposed to
+beautiful. Laura's intention had been to shield Mother from criticism,
+as well as to spare Miss Day's feelings. But to have done it so clumsily
+as this! To have had to wince under Miss Day's scepticism! It was only a
+wonder the governess had not there and then taxed her with the fib. For
+who believed in old nurses nowadays? They were a stock property,
+borrowed on the spur of the moment from readings in THE FAMILY HERALD,
+from Tennyson's LADY CLARE. Why on earth had such a far-fetched excuse
+leapt to her tongue? Why could she not have said Sarah, the servant, the
+maid-of-all-work? Then Miss Day would have had no chance to sniff, and
+she, Laura, could have believed herself believed, instead of having to
+fret over her own stupidity.--But what she would like more than
+anything to know was, why the mending of the stockings at home should
+NOT be Sarah's work? Why must it just be Mother--her mother alone--who
+made herself so disagreeably conspicuous, and not merely by darning the
+stockings, but, what was a still greater grievance, by not even darning
+them well? 
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+
+
+It was an odd thing, all the same, how easy it was to be friends with
+Lilith Gordon: though she did not belong to Laura's set though Laura did
+not even like her, and though she had had ample proof that Lilith was
+double-faced, not to be trusted. Yet, in the months that followed the
+affair of the purple dress, Laura grew more intimate with the plump,
+sandy-haired girl than with either Bertha, or Inez, or Tilly. Or, to put
+it more exactly, she was continually having lapses into intimacy, and
+repenting them when it was too late. In one way Lilith was responsible
+for this: she could make herself very pleasant when she chose, seem to
+be your friend through thick and thin, thus luring you on to unbosom
+yourself; and afterwards she would go away and laugh over what you had
+told her, with other girls. And Laura was peculiarly helpless under such
+circumstances: if it was done with tact, and with a certain assumed
+warmth of manner, anyone could make a cat's-paw of her.
+
+That Lilith and she undressed for bed together had also something to do
+with their intimacy: this half-hour when one's hair was unbound and
+replaited, and fat and thin arms wielded the brush, was the time of all
+others for confidences. The governess who occupied the fourth bed did
+not come upstairs till ten o'clock; the publican's daughter, a lazy
+girl, was usually half asleep before the other two had their clothes
+off.
+
+It was in the course of one of these confidential chats that
+Laura did a very foolish thing. In a moment of weakness, she
+gratuitously gave away the secret that Mother supported her family by
+the work of her hands.
+
+The two girls were sitting on the side of Lilith's bed. Laura had a day
+of mishaps behind her--that partly, no doubt, accounted for her
+self-indulgence. But, in addition, her companion had just told her,
+unasked, that she thought her "very pretty". It was not in Laura's
+nature to let this pass: she was never at ease under an obligation; she
+had to pay the coin back in kind.
+
+"Embroidery? What sort? However does she do it?"--Lilith's interest was
+on tiptoe at once--a false and slimy interest, the victim afterwards
+told herself.
+
+"Oh, my mother's awfully clever. It's just lovely, too, what she does--
+all in silk--and ever so many different colours. She made a piano-cover
+once, and got fifty pounds for it."
+
+"How perfectly splendid!"
+
+"But that was only a lucky chance . . . that she got that to do. She
+mostly does children's dresses and cloaks and things like that."
+
+"But she's not a dressmaker, is she?"
+
+"A dressmaker? I should think not indeed! They're sent up, all ready to
+work, from the biggest shops in town."
+
+"I say!--she must be clever."
+
+"She is; she can do anything. She makes the patterns up all out of her
+own head. "--And filled with pride in Mother's accomplishments and
+Lilith's appreciation of them, Laura fell asleep that night
+without a qualm. 
+
+It was the next evening. Several of the boarders who had finished
+preparing their lessons were loitering in the dining-hall, Laura and
+Lilith among them. In the group was a girl called Lucy, young but very
+saucy; for she lived at Toorak, and came of one of the best families in
+Melbourne. She was not as old as Laura by two years, but was already
+feared and respected for the fine scorn of her opinions.
+
+Lilith Gordon had bragged: "My uncle's promised me a gold watch and chain
+when I pass matric."
+
+Lucy of Toorak laughed: her nose came down, and her mouth went up at the
+corners. "Do you think you ever will?"
+
+"G. o. k. and He won't tell. But I'll probably get the watch all the
+same."
+
+"Where does your uncle hang out?"
+
+"Brisbane."
+
+"Sure he can afford to buy it?"
+
+"Of course he can."
+
+"What is he?"
+
+Lilith was unlucky enough to hesitate, ever so slightly. "Oh, he's got
+plenty of money," she asserted.
+
+"She doesn't like to say what he is!"
+
+"I don't care whether I say it or not."
+
+"A butcher, p'raps, or an undertaker?"
+
+"A butcher! He's got the biggest newspaper in Brisbane!"
+
+"A newspaper! Great Scott! Her uncle keeps a newspaper!"
+
+There was a burst of laughter from those standing round.
+
+Lilith was scarlet now. "It's nothing to be ashamed of," she said
+angrily.
+
+But Lucy of Toorak could not recover from her amusement. "An uncle who
+keeps a newspaper! A newspaper! Well, I'm glad none of MY uncles are so
+rummy.--I say, does he leave it at front doors himself in the morning?"
+
+Laura had at first looked passively on, well pleased to see another than
+herself the butt of young Lucy's wit. But at this stage of her existence
+she was too intent on currying favour, to side with any but the stronger
+party. And so she joined in the boisterous mirth Lilith's admission and
+Lucy's reception of it excited, and flung her gibes with the rest.
+
+She was pulled up short by a hissing in her ear. "If you say one word
+more, I'll tell about the embroidery!"
+
+Laura went pale with fright: she had been in good spirits that day, and
+had quite forgotten her silly confidence of the night before. Now, the
+jeer that was on the tip of her tongue hung fire. She could not all at
+once obliterate her smile--that would have been noticeable; but it grew
+weaker, stiffer and more unnatural, then gradually faded away, leaving
+her with a very solemn little face.
+
+From this night on, Lilith Gordon represented a powder-mine, which might
+explode at any minute.--And she herself had laid the train!
+
+From the outset, Laura had been accepted, socially, by even the most
+exclusive, as one of themselves; and this, in spite of her niggardly
+allowance, her ridiculous clothes. For the child had race in
+her: in a well-set head, in good hands and feet and ears. Her nose, too,
+had a very pronounced droop, which could stand only for blue blood, or a
+Hebraic ancestor--and Jews were not received as boarders in the school.
+Now, loud as money made itself in this young community, effectual as it
+was in cloaking shortcomings, it did not go all the way: inherited
+instincts and traditions were not so easily subdued. Just some of the
+wealthiest, too, were aware that their antecedents would not stand a
+close scrutiny; and thus a mighty respect was engendered in them for
+those who had nothing to fear. Moreover, directly you got away from the
+vastly rich, class distinctions were observed with an exactitude such as
+can only obtain in an exceedingly mixed society. The three professions
+alone were sacrosanct. The calling of architect, for example, or of
+civil engineer, was, if a fortune had not been accumulated, utterly
+without prestige; trade, any connection with trade--the merest bowing
+acquaintance with buying and selling--was a taint that nothing could
+remove; and those girls who were related to shopkeepers, or, more awful
+still, to publicans, would rather have bitten their tongues off than
+have owned to the disgrace.
+
+Yet Laura knew very well that good birth and an aristocratic appearance
+would not avail her, did the damaging fact leak out that Mother worked
+for her living. Work in itself was bad enough--how greatly to be envied
+were those whose fathers did nothing more active than live on their
+money! But the additional circumstance of Mother being a woman made
+things ten times worse: ladies did not work; some one always
+left them enough to live on, and if he didn't, well, then he, too,
+shared the ignominy. So Laura went in fear and trembling lest the truth
+should come to light--in that case, she would be a pariah indeed--went
+in hourly dread of Lilith betraying her. Nothing, however, happened--at
+least as far as she could discover--and she sought to propitiate Lilith
+in every possible way. For the time being, though, anxiety turned her
+into a porcupine, ready to erect her quills at a touch. She was ever on
+the look-out for an allusion to her mother's position, and for the
+slight that was bound to accompany it.
+
+Even the governesses noticed the change in her.
+
+Three of them sat one evening round the fire in Mrs. Gurley's
+sitting-room, with their feet on the fender. The girls had gone to bed;
+it was Mrs. Gurley's night off, and as Miss Day was also on leave, the
+three who were left could draw in more closely than usual. Miss
+Snodgrass had made the bread into toast--in spite of Miss Chapman's
+quakings lest Mrs. Gurley should notice the smell when she came in--
+and, as they munched, Miss Snodgrass related how she had just
+confiscated a book Laura Rambotham was trying to smuggle upstairs, and
+how it had turned out that it belonged, not to Laura herself, but to
+Lilith Gordon.
+
+"She was like a little spitfire about it all the same. A most
+objectionable child, I call her. It was only yesterday I wanted to look
+at some embroidery on her apron--a rather pretty new stitch--and do
+you think she'd let me see it? She jerked it away and glared at me as if
+she would have liked to eat me. I could have boxed her ears."
+
+"I never have any trouble with Laura. I don't think you know how
+to manage her," said Miss Chapman, and executed a little manoeuvre. She
+had poor teeth; and, having awaited a moment when Miss Snodgrass's sharp
+eyes were elsewhere engaged, she surreptitiously dropped the crusts of
+the toast into her handkerchief.
+
+"I'd be sorry to treat her as you do," said Miss Snodgrass, and
+yawned. "Girls need to be made to sit up nowadays."
+
+She yawned again, and gazing round the room for fresh food for talk,
+caught Miss Zielinski with her eye. "Hullo, Ziely, what are you deep in?"
+She put her arm round the other's neck, and unceremoniously laid hold of
+her book. "You naughty girl, you're at Ouida again! Always got your nose
+stuck in some trashy novel."
+
+"DO let me alone," said Miss Zielinski pettishly, holding fast to the
+book; but she did not raise her eyes, for they were wet.
+
+"You know you'll count the washing all wrong again to-morrow, your
+head'll be so full of that stuff."
+
+"Yes, it's time to go, girls; to-morrow's Saturday." And Miss Chapman
+sighed; for, on a Saturday morning between six and eight o'clock,
+fifty-five lots of washing had to be sorted out and arranged in piles.
+
+"Holy Moses, what a life!" ejaculated Miss Snodgrass, and yawned again,
+in a kind of furious desperation. "I swear I'll marry the first man that
+asks me, to get away from it.--As long as he has money enough to keep
+me decently."
+
+"You would soon wish yourself back, if you had no more feeling
+for him that that," reproved Miss Chapman.
+
+"Catch me! Not even if he had a hump, or kept a mistress, or was over
+eighty. Oh dear, oh dear!"--she stretched herself so violently that her
+bones cracked; to resume, in a tone of ordinary conversation: "I do wish
+I knew whether to put a brown wing or a green one in that blessed hat of
+mine."
+
+Miss Chapman's face straightened out from its shocked expression. "Your
+hat? Why do you want to change it? It's very nice as it is."
+
+"My dear Miss Chapman, it's at least six months out of date.--Ziely,
+you're crying!"
+
+"I'm not," said Miss Zielinski weakly, caught in the act of blowing her
+nose.
+
+"How on earth can you cry over a book? As if it were true!"
+
+"I thank God I haven't such a cold heart as you."
+
+"And I thank God I'm not a romantic idiot. But your name's not Thekla
+for nothing I suppose."
+
+"My name's as good as yours. And I won't be looked down on because my
+father was once a German."
+
+"'Mr. Kayser, do you vant to buy a dawg?'" hummed Miss Snodgrass.
+
+"Girls, girls!" admonished Miss Chapman. "How you two do bicker.--
+There, that's Mrs. Gurley now! And it's long past ten."
+
+At the creaking of the front door both juniors rose, gathered their
+belongings together, and hurried from the room. But it was a false
+alarm; and having picked up some crumbs and set the chairs in order,
+Miss Chapman resumed her seat. As she waited, she looked about
+her and wondered, with a sigh, whether it would ever be her good fortune
+to call this cheery little room her own. It was only at moments like the
+present that she could indulge such a dream. Did Mrs. Gurley stand
+before her, majestic in bonnet and mantle, as in a minute or two she
+would, or draped in her great shawl, thoughts of this kind sank to their
+proper level, and Miss Chapman knew them for what they were worth. But
+sitting alone by night, her chin in her hand, her eyes on the dying
+fire, around her the eerie stillness of the great house, her ambition
+did not seem wholly out of reach; and, giving rein to her fancy, she
+could picture herself sweeping through halls and rooms, issuing orders
+that it was the business of others to fulfil, could even think out a few
+changes that should be made, were she head of the staff.
+
+But the insertion of Mrs. Gurley's key in the lock, the sound of her
+foot on the oilcloth, was enough to waken a sense of guilt in Miss
+Chapman, and make her start to her feet--the drab, elderly, apologetic
+governess once more. 
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+
+
+DA REGIERT DER NACHBAR, DA WIRD MAN NACHBAR.
+
+NIETZSCHE
+
+
+
+You might regulate your outward habit to the last button of what you
+were expected to wear; you might conceal the tiny flaws and shuffle over
+the big improprieties in your home life, which were likely to damage
+your value in the eyes of your companions; you might, in brief, march in
+the strictest order along the narrow road laid down for you by these
+young lawgivers, keeping perfect step and time with them: yet of what
+use were all your pains, if you could not marshal your thoughts and
+feelings--the very realest part of you--in rank and file as
+well? . .. if these persisted in escaping control?--Such was the question
+which, about this time, began to present itself to Laura's mind.
+
+It first took form on the day Miss Blount, the secretary, popped her
+head in at the door and announced: "At half-past three, Class Two to
+Number One."
+
+Class Two was taking a lesson in elocution: that is to say Mr. Repton,
+the visiting-master for this branch of study, was reading aloud, in a
+sonorous voice, a chapter of HANDY ANDY. He underlined his points
+heavily, and his hearers, like the self-conscious, emotionally shy young
+colonials they were, felt half amused by, half-superior to the
+histrionic display. They lounged in easy, ungraceful postures while he
+read, reclining one against another, or sprawling forward over
+the desks, their heads on their arms. It was the first hour after
+dinner, when one's thoughts were sleepy and stupid, and Mr. Repton was
+not a pattern disciplinarian; but the general abandonment of attitude
+had another ground as well. It had to do with the shape of the master's
+legs. These were the object of an enthusiastic admiration. They were
+generally admitted to be the handsomest in the school, and those girls
+were thought lucky who could get the best view of them beneath the desk.
+Moreover, the rumour ran that Mr. Repton had once been an actor--his
+very curly hair no doubt lent weight to the report--and Class Two was
+fond of picturing the comely limbs in the tights of a Hamlet or Othello.
+It also, of course, invented for him a lurid life outside the College
+walls--notwithstanding the fact that he and his sonsy wife sat opposite
+the boarders in church every Sunday morning, the embodiment of the
+virtuous commonplace; and whenever he looked at a pupil, every time he
+singled one of them out for special notice, he was believed to have an
+ulterior motive, his words were construed into meaning something they
+should not mean: so that the poor man was often genuinely puzzled by the
+reception of his friendly overtures.--Such was Class Two's youthful
+contribution to the romance of school life.
+
+On this particular day, however, the sudden, short snap of the
+secretary's announcement that, instead of dispersing at half-past three,
+the entire school was to reassemble, galvanised the class. Glances of
+mingled apprehension and excitement flew round; eyes telegraphed [P.119]
+vigorous messages; and there was little attention left for well-shaped
+members, or for the antics of Handy Andy under his mother's bed.
+
+But when the hour came, and all classes were moving in the same
+direction, verandahs and corridors one seething mass of girls, it was
+the excitement that prevailed. For any break was welcome in the
+uniformity of the days; and the nervous tension now felt was no more
+disagreeable, at bottom, than was the pleasant trepidation experienced
+of old by those who went to be present at a hanging.
+
+In the course of the past weeks a number of petty thefts had been
+committed. Day-scholars who left small sums of money in their jacket
+pockets would find, on returning to the cloakrooms, that these had been
+pilfered. For a time, the losses were borne in silence, because of the
+reluctance inherent in young girls to making a fuss. But when shillings
+began to vanish in the same fashion, and once even half-a-crown was
+missing, it was recognised that the thing must be put a stop to; and one
+bolder than the rest, and with a stronger sense of public morality,
+lodged a complaint. Investigations were made, a trap was set, and the
+thief discovered.--The school was now assembled to see justice done.
+
+The great room was fuller even than at morning prayers; for then there
+was always an unpunctual minority. A crowd of girls who had not been
+able to find seats was massed together at the further end. As at
+prayers, visiting and resident teachers stood in a line, with their
+backs to the high windows; they were ranged in order of precedence,
+topped by Dr Pughson, who stood next Mr. Strachey's desk. All [P.120]
+alike wore blank, stern faces.
+
+In one of the rows of desks for two--blackened, ink-scored, dusty
+desks, with eternally dry ink-wells--sat Laura and Tilly, behind them
+Inez and Bertha. The cheeks of the four were flushed. But, while the
+others only whispered and wondered, Laura was on the tiptoe of
+expectation. She could not get her breath properly, and her hands and
+feet were cold. Twisting her fingers, in and out, she moistened her lips
+with her tongue.--When, oh, when would it begin?
+
+These few foregoing minutes were the most trying of any. For when, in an
+ominous hush, Mr. Strachey entered and strode to his desk, Laura
+suddenly grew calm, and could take note of everything that passed.
+
+The Principal raised his hand, to enjoin a silence that was already
+absolute.
+
+"Will Miss Johns stand up!"
+
+At these words, spoken in a low, impressive tone, Bertha burst into
+tears and hid her face in her handkerchief. Hundreds of eyes sought the
+unhappy culprit as she rose, then to be cast down and remain glued to
+the floor.
+
+The girl stood, pale and silly-looking, and stared at Mr. Strachey much
+as a rabbit stares at the snake that is about to eat it. She was a very
+ugly girl of fourteen, with a pasty face, and lank hair that dangled to
+her shoulders. Her mouth had fallen half open through fear, and she did
+not shut it all the time she was on view.
+
+Laura could not take her eyes off the scene: they travelled, burning
+with curiosity, from Annie Johns to Mr. Strachey, and back again to the
+miserable thief. When, after a few introductory remarks on crime
+in general, the Principal passed on to the present case, and described
+it in detail, Laura was fascinated by his oratory, and gazed full at
+him. He made it all live vividly before her; she hung on his lips,
+appreciating his points, the skilful way in which he worked up his
+climaxes. But then, she herself knew what it was to be poor--as Annie
+Johns had been. She understood what it would mean to lack your tram-fare
+on a rainy morning--according to Mr. Strachey this was the motor
+impulse of the thefts--because a lolly shop had stretched out its
+octopus arms after you. She could imagine, too, with a shiver, how easy
+it would be, the loss of the first pennies having remained undiscovered,
+to go on to threepenny-bits, and from these to sixpences. More
+particularly since the money had been taken, without exception, from
+pockets in which there was plenty. Not, Laura felt sure, in order to
+avoid detection, as Mr. Strachey supposed, but because to those who had
+so much a few odd coins could not matter. She wondered if everyone else
+agreed with him on this point. How did the teachers feel about it?--and
+she ran her eyes over the row, to learn their opinions from their faces.
+But these were as stolid as ever. Only good old Chapman, she thought,
+looked a little sorry, and Miss Zielinski--yes, Miss Zielinski was
+crying! This discovery thrilled Laura--just as, at the play, the fact
+of one spectator being moved to tears intensifies his neighbour's
+enjoyment.--But when Mr. Strachey left the field of personal narration
+and went on to the moral aspects of the affair, Laura ceased to be
+gripped by him, and turned anew to study the pale, dogged face [P.122]
+of the accused, though she had to crane her neck to do it. Before such a
+stony mask as this, she was driven to imagine what must be going on
+behind it; and, while thus engrossed, she felt her arm angrily tweaked.
+It was Tilly.
+
+"You ARE a beast to stare like that!"
+
+"I'm not staring."
+
+She turned her eyes away at once, more than half believing her own
+words; and then, for some seconds, she tried to do what was expected of
+her: to feel a decent unconcern. At her back, Bertha's purry crying went
+steadily on. What on earth did she cry for? She had certainly not heard
+a word Mr. Strachey said. Laura fidgeted in her seat, and stole a
+sideglance at Tilly's profile. She could not, really could not miss the
+last scene of all, when, in masterly fashion, the Principal was
+gathering the threads together. And so, feeling rather like "Peeping
+Tom", she cautiously raised her eyes again, and this time managed to use
+them without turning her head.
+
+All other eyes were still charitably lowered. Several girls were crying
+now, but without a sound. And, as the last, awful moments drew near,
+even Bertha was hushed, and of all the odd hundreds of throats not one
+dared to cough. Laura's heart began to palpitate, for she felt the
+approach of the final climax, Mr. Strachey's periods growing ever slower
+and more massive.
+
+When, after a burst of eloquence which, the child felt, would not have
+shamed a Bishop, the Principal drew himself up to his full height, and,
+with uplifted arm, thundered forth: "Herewith, Miss Annie Johns, I
+publicly expel you from the school! Leave it, now, this moment,
+and never darken its doors again!"--when this happened, Laura was shot
+through by an ecstatic quiver, such as she had felt once only in her
+life before; and that was when a beautiful, golden-haired Hamlet, who
+had held a Ballarat theatre entranced for a whole evening, fell dead by
+Laertes' sword, to the rousing plaudits of the house. Breathing
+unevenly, she watched, lynx-eyed, every inch of Annie Johns' progress:
+watched her pick up her books, edge out of her seat and sidle through
+the rows of desks; watched her walk to the door with short jerky
+movements, mount the two steps that led to it, fumble with the handle,
+turn it, and vanish from sight; and when it was all over, and there was
+nothing more to see, she fell back in her seat with an audible sigh.
+
+It was too late after this for the winding of the snaky line about the
+streets and parks of East Melbourne, which constituted the boarders'
+daily exercise. They were despatched to stretch their legs in the
+garden. Here, as they walked round lawns and tennis-courts, they
+discussed the main event of the afternoon, and were a little more
+vociferous than usual, in an attempt to shake off the remembrance of a
+very unpleasant half-hour.
+
+"I bet you Sandy rather enjoyed kicking up that shindy."
+
+"DID you see Puggy's boots again? Girls, he MUST take twelves!"
+
+"And that old blubber of a Ziely's handkerchief! It was filthy. I told
+you yesterday I was sure she never washed her neck."
+
+Bertha, whose tears had dried as rapidly as sea-spray, gave Laura a dig
+in the ribs. "What's up with you, old Tweedledum? You're as glum
+as a lubra."
+
+"No, I'm not."
+
+"It's my belief that Laura was sorry for that pig," threw in Tilly.
+
+"Indeed I wasn't!" said Laura indignantly.
+
+"Sorry for a thief?"
+
+"I tell you I WASN'T!"--and this was true. Among the divers feelings
+Laura had experienced that afternoon, pity had not been included.
+
+"If you want to be chums with such a mangy beast, you'd better go to
+school in a lock-up."
+
+"I don't know what my father'd say, if he knew I'd been in the same
+class as a pickpocket," said the daughter of a minister from Brisbane.
+"I guess he wouldn't have let me stop here a week."
+
+Laura went one better. "My mother wouldn't have let me stop a day."
+
+Those standing by laughed, and a girl from the Riverina said: "Oh, no,
+of course not!" in a tone that made Laura wince and regret her
+readiness.
+
+Before tea, she had to practise. The piano stood in an outside
+classroom, where no one could hear whether she was diligent or idle, and
+she soon gave up playing and went to the window. Here, having dusted the
+gritty sill with her petticoat, she leaned her chin on her two palms and
+stared out into the sunbaked garden. It was empty now, and very still.
+The streets that lay behind the high palings were deserted in the drowsy
+heat; the only sound to be heard was a gentle tinkling to vespers in the
+neighbouring Catholic Seminary. Leaning thus on her elbows, and
+balancing herself first on her heels, then on her toes, Laura
+went on, in desultory fashion, with the thoughts that had been set in
+motion during the afternoon. She wondered where Annie Johns was now, and
+what she was doing; wondered how she had faced her mother, and what her
+father had said to her. All the rest of them had gone back at once to
+their everyday life; Annie Johns alone was cut adrift. What would happen
+to her? Would she perhaps be turned out of the house? . . . into the
+streets?--and Laura had a lively vision of the guilty creature, in rags
+and tatters, slinking along walls and sleeping under bridges, eternally
+moved on by a ruthless London policeman (her only knowledge of extreme
+destitution being derived from the woeful tale of "Little Jo").--And to
+think that the beginning of it all had been the want of a trumpery
+tram-fare. How safe the other girls were! No wonder they could allow
+themselves to feel shocked and outraged; none of THEM knew what it was
+not to have threepence in your pocket. While she, Laura . . . Yes, and
+it must be this same incriminating acquaintance with poverty that made
+her feel differently about Annie Johns and what she had done. For her
+feelings HAD been different--there was no denying that. Did she now
+think back over the half-hour spent in Number One, and act honest Injun
+with herself, she had to admit that her companions' indignant and
+horrified aversion to the crime had not been hers, let alone their
+decent indifference towards the criminal. No, to be candid, she had been
+deeply interested in the whole affair, had even managed to extract an
+unseemly amount of entertainment from it. And that, of course, should
+not have been. It was partly Mr. Strachey's fault, for making it
+so dramatic; but none the less she genuinely despised herself, for
+having such a queer inside.
+
+"Pig--pig--pig!" she muttered under her breath, and wrinkled her nose
+in a grimace.
+
+The real reason of her pleasurable absorption was, she supposed, that
+she had understood Annie Johns' motive better than anyone else. Well,
+she had had no business to understand--that was the long and the short
+of it: nice-minded girls found such a thing impossible, and turned
+incuriously away. And her companions had been quick to recognise her
+difference of attitude, or they would never have dared to accuse her of
+sympathy with the thief, or to doubt her chorusing assertion with a
+sneer. For them, the gap was not very wide between understanding and
+doing likewise. And they were certainly right.--Oh! the last wish in
+the world she had was to range herself on the side of the sinner; she
+longed to see eye to eye with her comrades--if she had only known how
+to do it. For there was no saying where it might lead you, if you
+persisted in having odd and peculiar notions; you might even end by
+being wicked yourself. Let her take a lesson in time from Annie's fate.
+For, beginning perhaps with ideas that were no more unlike those of her
+schoolfellows than were Laura's own, Annie was now a branded thief and
+an outcast.--And the child's feelings, as she stood at the window, were
+not very far removed from prayer. Had they found words, they would have
+taken the form of an entreaty that she might be preserved from having
+thoughts that were different from other people's; that she might be made
+to feel as she ought to feel, in a proper, ladylike way--and
+especially did she see a companion convicted of crime.
+
+Below all this, in subconscious depths, a chord of fear seemed to have
+been struck in her as well--the fear of stony faces, drooped lids, and
+stretched, pointing fingers. For that night she started up, with a cry,
+from dreaming that not Annie Johns but she was being expelled; that an
+army of spear-like first fingers was marching towards her, and that, try
+as she would, she could not get her limp, heavy legs to bear her to the
+schoolroom door.
+
+And this dream often returned. 
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+
+
+ON her honourable promotion the following Christmas--she mounted two
+forms this time--Laura was a thin, middle-sized girl of thirteen, who
+still did not look her age. The curls had vanished. In their place hung
+a long, dark plait, which she bound by choice with a red ribbon.
+
+Tilly was the only one of her intimates who skipped a class with her;
+hence she was thrown more exclusively than before on Tilly's
+companionship; for it was a melancholy fact: if you were not in the same
+class as the girl who was your friend, your interests and hers were soon
+fatally sundered. On their former companions, Tilly and Laura, from
+their new perch, could not but look down: the two had masters now for
+all subjects; Euclid loomed large; Latin was no longer bounded by the
+First Principia; and they fussed considerably, in the others' hearing,
+over the difficulties of the little blue books that began: GALLIA EST
+OMNIS DIVISA IN PARTES TRES. 
+
+In the beginning, they held very close together; for their new fellows
+were inclined to stand on their dignity with the pair of interlopers
+from Class Two. They were all older than Tilly and Laura, and thought
+themselves wiser: here were girls of sixteen and seventeen years of age,
+some of whom would progress no farther along the high-road of education.
+As for the boarders who sat in this form, they made up a jealous little
+clique, and it was some time before the younger couple could
+discover the secret bond.
+
+Then, one morning, the two were sitting with a few others on the
+verandah bench, looking over their lessons for the day. Mrs. Gurley had
+snatched a moment's rest there, on her way to the secretary's office,
+and as long as she allowed her withering eye to play upon things and
+people, the girls conned their pages with a great show of industry. But
+no sooner had she sailed away than Kate Horner leant forward and called
+to Maria Morell, who was at the other end of the seat: "I say, Maria,
+Genesis LI, 32."--She held an open Bible in her hand.
+
+Maria Morell frowned caution. "Dash it, Kate, mind those kids!"
+
+"Oh, they won't savvy."
+
+But Laura's eyes were saucers of curiosity, for Tilly, who kept her long
+lashes lowered, had given her a furious nudge. With a wink and a beck to
+each other, the bigger girls got up and went away.
+
+"I say, what did you poke me so hard for?" inquired Laura as she and
+Tilly followed in their wake, at the clanging of the public prayer-bell.
+
+"You soft, didn't you hear what she said?"
+
+"Of course I did"--and Laura repeated the reference.
+
+"Let's look it up then." Under cover of the prayer Tilly sought it out,
+and together they bent their heads over it.
+
+On this occasion, Tilly was more knowing than Laura; but on this alone;
+for when Laura once grasped what they were driving at, she was as
+nimble-witted as any.
+
+Only a day or two later it was she who, in face of Kate and
+Maria, invited Tilly to turn up chapter and verse.
+
+Both the elder girls burst out laughing.
+
+"By dad!" cried Kate Horner, and smacked her thigh. "This kid knows a
+thing or two."
+
+"You bet! I told you she wasn't born yesterday."--And Maria laid her
+arm round Laura's shoulders.
+
+Thus was Laura encouraged, put on her mettle; and soon there was no more
+audacious Bible-reader in the class than she.
+
+The girls were thrown thus upon the Book of Books for their contraband
+knowledge, since it was the only frankly outspoken piece of literature
+allowed within the College walls: the classics studied were rigidly
+expurgated; the school library was kept so dull that no one over the age
+of ten much cared to borrow a volume from it. And, by fair means or
+unfair, it was necessary to obtain information on matters of sex; for
+girls most of whom were well across the threshold of womanhood the
+subject had an invincible fascination.
+
+Such knowledge as they possessed was a strange jumble, picked up at
+random: in one direction they were well primed; in another, supremely
+ignorant. Thus, though they received lectures on what was
+called "Physiology", and for these were required to commit to memory the
+name of every bone and artery in the body, yet all that related to a
+woman's special organs and chief natural function was studiously
+ignored. The subject being thus chastely shrouded in mystery, they were
+thrown back on guesswork and speculation--with the quaintest results.
+The fancies woven by quite big girls, for instance, round the
+physical feat of bringing a child into the world, would have supplied
+material for a volume of fairytales. On many a summer evening at this
+time, in a nook of the garden, heads of all shades might have been seen
+pressed as close together as a cluster of settled bees; and like the
+humming of bees, too, were the busy whisperings and subdued buzzes of
+laughter that accompanied this hot discussion of the "how"--as a living
+answer to which, each of them would probably some day walk the world.
+Innumerable theories were afloat, one more fantastic than another; and
+the wilder the conjecture, the greater was the respect and applause it
+gained.
+
+On the other hand, of less profitable information they had amassed a
+goodly store. Girls who came from up-country could tell a lively tale of
+the artless habits of the blacks; others, who were at home in mining
+towns, described the doings in Chinese camps--those unavoidable
+concomitants of gold-grubbing settlements; rhymes circulated that would
+have staggered a back-blocker; while the governesses were without
+exception, young and old, kindly and unkindly, laid under such
+flamboyant suspicions as the poor ladies had, for certain, never heard
+breathed--since their own impudent schooldays.
+
+This dabbling in the illicit--it had little in common with the opener
+grime of the ordinary schoolboy--did not even widen the outlook of
+these girls. For it was something to hush up and keep hidden away, to
+have qualms, even among themselves, about knowing; and, like all
+knowledge that fungus-like shrinks from the sun, it was stunted and
+unlovely. Their minds were warped by it, their vision was
+distorted: viewed through its lens, the most natural human relations
+appeared unnatural. Thus, not the primmest patterns of family life could
+hope for mercy in their eyes; over the family, too, man, as read by
+these young rigorists, was held to leave his serpent's trail of desire.
+
+For out of it all rose the vague, crude picture of woman as the prey of
+man. Man was animal, a composite of lust and cruelty, with no aim but
+that of brutally taking his pleasure: something monstrous, yet to be
+adored; annihilating, yet to be sought after; something to flee and, at
+the same time, to entice, with every art at one's disposal.
+
+As long as it was solely a question of clandestine knowledge and
+ingenious surmisings, Laura went merrily with the rest: here no barrier
+shut her off from her companions. Always a very inquisitive little girl,
+she was now agog to learn new lore. Her mind, in this direction, was
+like a clean but highly sensitised plate. And partly because of her
+previous entire ignorance, partly because of her extreme receptiveness,
+she soon outstripped her comrades, and before long, was one of the most
+skilful improvisers of the group: a dexterous theorist: a wicked little
+adept at innuendo.
+
+But that was all; a step farther, and she ran her head against a stone
+wall. For the invisible yeast that brought this ferment of natural
+curiosity to pass, was the girls' intense interest in the opposite sex:
+a penned-up interest that clamoured for an outlet; an interest which, in
+the life of these prospective mothers, had already usurped the main
+place. Laura, on the other hand, had so far had scant experience
+of boys of a desirable age, nor any liking for such as she had known;
+indeed she still held to her childish opinion that they were "silly"--
+feckless creatures, in spite of their greater strength and size--or
+downright disagreeable and antagonistic, like Godmother's Erwin and
+Marmaduke. No breath of their possible dangerous fascination had
+hitherto reached her. Hence, an experience that came her way, at the
+beginning of the autumn was of the nature of an awakening. 
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+
+
+"My cousin Bob's awfully gone on you."
+
+Laura gaped at Tilly, in crimson disbelief. "But I've never spoken to
+him!"
+
+"Doesn't count. He's seen you in church."
+
+"Go on!--you're stuffing."
+
+"Word of honour!--And I've promised him to ask aunt if I can bring you
+with me to lunch next Saturday."
+
+Laura looked forward to this day with mixed feelings. She was flattered
+at being invited to the big house in town where Tilly's relatives lived;
+but she felt embarrassed at the prospect, and she had not the least idea
+what a boy who was "gone" on you would expect you to be or to do. Bob was
+a beautiful youth of seventeen, tall, and dark, and slender, with
+milk-white teeth and Spanish eyes; and Laura's mouth dried up when she
+thought of perhaps having to be sprightly or coquettish with him.
+
+On the eventful morning Tilly came to her room while she was dressing,
+and eyed her critically.
+
+"Oh, I say, don't put on that brown hat . . . for mercy's sake! Bob
+can't stand brown."
+
+But the brown was Laura's best, and she demurred.
+
+"Oh well, if you don't care to look nice, you know . . ."
+
+Of course she did; she was burning to. She even accepted the loan of a
+sash from her friend, because "Bob loves blue"; and went out feeling odd
+and unlike herself, in her everyday hat and borrowed plumes.
+
+The Aunt, a pleasant, youthful-looking lady, called for them in a
+white-hooded wagonette, and set them down at the house with a playful
+warning.
+
+"Now don't get up to any mischief, you two!"
+
+"No fear!" was Tilly's genial response, as Aunt and cab drove off.
+
+They were going to "do the block", Tilly explained, and would meet Bob
+there; but they must first make sure that the drive had not disarranged
+their hair or the position of their hats; and she led the way to her
+aunt's bedroom.
+
+Laura, though she had her share of natural vanity, was too impatient to
+do more than cast a perfunctory glance at her reflected self. At this
+period of her life when a drive in a hired cab was enough of a novelty
+to give her pleasure, a day such as the one that lay before her filled
+her with unbounded anticipation.
+
+She fidgeted from one leg to another while she waited. For Tilly was in
+no hurry to be gone: she prinked and finicked, making lavish use, after
+the little swing-glass at school, of the big mirror with its movable
+wings; she examined her teeth, pulled down her under-lids, combed her
+eyebrows, twisted her neck this way and that, in an endeavour to view
+her person from every angle; she took liberties with perfumes and
+brushes: was, in short, blind and deaf to all but the perfecting of
+herself--this rather mannish little self, which, despite a most womanly
+plumpness, affected a boyish bonhomie, and emphasised the role by
+wearing a stiff white collar and cuffs.
+
+Laura was glad when she at last decided that she would "do", and
+when they stepped out into the radiant autumn morning.
+
+"What a perfectly scrumptious day!"
+
+"Yes, bully.--I say, IS my waist all right?"
+
+"Quite right. And ever so small."
+
+"I know. I gave it an extra pull-in.--Now if only we're lucky enough to
+get hold of a man or two we know!"
+
+The air, Australian air, met them like a prickling champagne: it was
+incredibly crisp, pure, buoyant. From the top of the eastern hill the
+spacious white street sloped speedily down, to run awhile in a hollow,
+then mount again at the other end. Where the two girls turned into it,
+it was quiet; but the farther they descended, the fuller it grew--
+fuller of idlers like themselves, out to see and to be seen.
+
+Laura cocked her chin; she had not had a like sense of freedom since
+being at school. And besides, was not a boy, a handsome boy, waiting for
+her, and expecting her? This was the CLOU of the day, the end for which
+everything was making; yet of such stuff was Laura that she would have
+felt relieved, could the present moment have been spun out indefinitely.
+The state of suspense was very pleasant to her.
+
+As for Tilly, that young lady was swinging the shoulders atop of the
+little waist in a somewhat provocative fashion, only too conscious of
+the grey-blueness of her fine eyes, and the modish cut of her clothes.
+She had a knack which seemed to Laura both desirable and unattainable:
+that of appearing to be engrossed in glib chat with her companion, while
+in reality she did not hear a word Laura said, and ogled
+everyone who passed, out of the tail of her eye.
+
+They reached the "block", that strip of Collins Street which forms the
+fashionable promenade. Here the road was full of cabs and carriages, and
+there was a great crowd on the pavement. The girls progressed but
+slowly. People were meeting their friends, shopping, changing books at
+the library, eating ices at the confectioner's, fruit at the big
+fruit-shop round the corner. There were a large number of high-collared
+young dudes, some Trinity and Ormond men with coloured hatbands, ladies
+with little parcels dangling from their wrists, and countless
+schoolgirls like themselves. Tilly grew momentarily livelier; her big
+eyes pounced, hawk-like, on every face she met, and her words to Laura
+became more disjointed than before. Finally, her efforts were crowned
+with success: she managed, by dint of glance and smile combined, to
+unhook a youth of her acquaintance from a group at a doorway, and to
+attach him to herself.
+
+In high good humour now that her aim was accomplished, she set about the
+real business of the morning--that of promenading up and down. She had
+no longer even a feigned interest left for Laura, and the latter walked
+beside the couple a lame and unnecessary third. Though she kept a keen
+watch for Bob, she could not discover him, and her time was spent for
+the most part in dodging people, and in catching up with her companions
+for it was difficult to walk three abreast in the crowd.
+
+Then she saw him--and with what an unpleasant shock. If only Tilly did
+not see him, too!
+
+But no such luck was hers. "Look out, there's Bob," nudged Tilly
+almost at once.
+
+Alas! there was no question of his waiting longingly for her to appear.
+He was walking with two ladies, and laughing and talking. He raised his
+hat to his cousin and her friend, but did not disengage himself, and
+passing them by disappeared in the throng.
+
+Behind her hand Tilly buzzed: "One of those Woodwards is awfully sweet on
+him. I bet he can't get loose."
+
+This was a drop of comfort. But as, at the next encounter, he still did
+not offer to join them--could it, indeed, be expected that he would
+prefer her company to that of the pretty, grown-up girls he was with?--
+as he again sidled past, Tilly, who had given him one of her most
+vivacious sparkles, turned and shot a glance at Laura's face.
+
+"For pity's sake, look a little more amiable, or he won't come at all."
+
+Laura felt more like crying; her sunshine was intercepted, her good
+spirits were quenched; had she had her will, she would have turned tail
+and gone straight back to school. She had not wanted Bob, had never
+asked him to be 'gone' on her, and if she had now to fish for him, into
+the bargain...However there was no help for it; the thing had to be gone
+through with; and, since Tilly seemed disposed to lay the blame of his
+lukewarmness at her door, Laura glued her mouth, the next time Bob hove
+in sight, into a feeble smile.
+
+Soon afterwards he came up to them. His cousin had an arch greeting in
+readiness.
+
+"Well, you've been doing a pretty mash, you have!" she cried,
+and jogged him with her elbow. "No wonder you'd no eyes for poor us. What
+price Miss Woodward's gloves this morning!"--at which Bob laughed,
+looked sly, and tapped his breast pocket.
+
+It was time to be moving homewards. Tilly and her beau led the way. "For
+we know you two would rather be alone. Now, Bob, not too many
+sheep's-eyes, please!"
+
+Bob smiled, and let fly a wicked glance at Laura from under his dark
+lashes. Dropping behind, they began to mount the hill. Now was the
+moment, felt Laura, to say something very witty, or pert, or clever; and
+a little pulse in her throat beat hard, as she furiously racked her
+brains. Oh, for just a morsel of Tilly's loose-tonguedness! One after
+the other she considered and dismissed: the pleasant coolness of the
+morning, the crowded condition of the street, even the fact of the next
+day being Sunday--ears and cheeks on fire, meanwhile, at her own
+slow-wittedness. And Bob smiled. She almost hated him for that smile. It
+was so assured, and withal so disturbing. Seen close at hand his teeth
+were whiter, his eyes browner than she had believed. His upper lip, too,
+was quite dark; and he fingered it incessantly, as he waited for her to
+make the onslaught.
+
+But he waited in vain; and when they had walked a whole street-block in
+this mute fashion, it was he who broke the silence.
+
+"Ripping girls, those Woodwards," he said, and seemed to be remembering
+their charms.
+
+"Yes, they looked very nice," said Laura in a small voice, and
+was extremely conscious of her own thirteen years.
+
+"Simply stunning! Though May's so slender--May's the pretty one--and
+has such a jolly figure . . . I believe I could span her waist with my
+two hands . . . her service is just AI--at tennis I mean."
+
+"Is it really?" said Laura wanly, and felt unutterably depressed at the
+turn the conversation was taking.--Her own waist was coarse, her
+knowledge of tennis of the slightest.
+
+"Ra-THER! Overhand, with a cut on it--she plays with a 14-oz. racquet.
+And she has a back drive, too, by Jove, that--you play, of course?"
+
+"Oh, yes." Laura spoke up manfully; but prayed that he would not press
+his inquiries further. At this juncture his attention was diverted by
+the passing of a fine tandem; and as soon as he brought it back to her
+again, she said: 'You're at Trinity, aren't you?'--which was finesse;
+for she knew he wasn't.
+
+"Well, yes . . . all but," answered Bob well pleased. "I start in this
+winter."
+
+"How nice!"
+
+There was another pause; then she blurted out: "We church girls always
+wear Trinity colours at the boat-race."
+
+She hoped from her heart, this might lead him to say that he would look
+out for her there; but he did nothing of the kind. His answer was to the
+effect that this year they jolly well expected to knock Ormond into a
+cocked hat.
+
+Lunch threatened to be formidable. To begin with, Laura, whose natural,
+easy frankness had by this time all but been successfully
+educated out of her, Laura was never shyer with strangers than at a
+meal, where every word you said could be listened to by a tableful of
+people. Then, too, her vis-a-vis was a small sharp child of five or six,
+called Thumbby, or Thumbkin, who only removed her bead-like eyes from
+Laura's face to be saucy to her father. And, what was worse, the Uncle
+turned out to be a type that struck instant terror into Laura: a
+full-fledged male tease.--He was, besides, very hairy of face, and
+preternaturally solemn.
+
+No sooner had he drawn in his chair to the table than he began. Lifting
+his head and thrusting out his chin, he sniffed the air in all
+directions with a moving nose--just as a cat does. Everyone looked at
+him in surprise. Tilly, who sat next him, went pink.
+
+"What is it, dear?" his wife at last inquired in a gentle voice; for it
+was evident that he was not going to stop till asked why he did it.
+
+"Mos' extraor'nary smell!" he replied. "Mother, d'you know, I could take
+my appledavy some one has been using my scent."
+
+"Nonsense, Tom."
+
+"Silly pa!" said the little girl.
+
+Ramming his knuckles into his eyes, he pretended to cry at his
+daughter's rebuke; then bore down on Laura.
+
+"D'you know, Miss Ra . . . Ra . . . Rambotham"--he made as if he could
+not get her name out--"d'you know that I'm a great man for scent? Fact.
+I take a bath in it every morning."
+
+Laura smiled uncertainly, fixed always by the child.
+
+"Fact, I assure you. Over the tummy, up to the chin.--Now,
+who's been at it? For it's my opinion I shan't have enough left to
+shampoo my eyebrows.--Bob, is it you?"
+
+"Don't be an ass, pater."
+
+"Cut me some bread, Bob, please," said Tilly hastily.
+
+"Mos' extraor'nary thing!" persisted the Uncle. "Or--good Lord, mother,
+can it be my monthly attack of D.T.'s beginning already? They're not
+due, you know, till next week, Monday, five o'clock."
+
+"Dear, DON'T be so silly. Besides it's my scent, not yours. And anyone
+is welcome to it."
+
+"Well, well, let's call in the cats!--By the way, Miss Ra . . . Ra . . .
+Rambotham, are you aware that this son of mine is a professed
+lady-killer?"
+
+Laura and Bob went different shades of crimson.
+
+"Why has she got so red?" the child asked her mother, in an audible
+whisper.
+
+"Oh, CHUCK it, pater!" murmured Bob in disgust.
+
+"Fact, I assure you. Put not your trust in Robert! He's always on with
+the new love before he's off with the old. You ask him whose glove he's
+still cherishing in the pocket next his heart."
+
+Bob pushed his plate from him and, for a moment, seemed about to leave
+the table. Laura could not lift her eyes. Tilly chewed in angry silence.
+
+Here, however, the child made a diversion.
+
+"You're a lady-kilda yourself, pa."
+
+"Me, Thumbkin?--Mother, d'you hear that?--Then it's the whiskers,
+Thumbby. Ladies love whiskers--or a fine drooping moustache, like my
+son Bob's." He sang: "'Oh, oh, the ladies loved him so!'"
+
+"Tom, dear, DO be quiet."
+
+"Tom, Tom, the piper's son!" chirped Thumbby.
+
+"Well, well, let's call in the cats!"--which appeared to be his way of
+changing the subject.
+
+It seemed, after this, as though the remainder of lunch might pass off
+without further hitch. Then however and all of a sudden, while he was
+peeling an apple, this dreadful man said, as though to himself: "Ra . . .
+Ra . . . Rambotham. Now where have I heard that name?"
+
+"Wa . . . Wa . . . Wamboffam!" mocked Thumbkin.
+
+"Monkey, if you're so sharp you'll cut yourself!--Young lady, do you
+happen to come from Warrenega?" he asked Laura, when Thumbkin's excited
+chirrup of: "I'll cut YOU, pa, into little bits!" had died away.
+
+Ready to sink through the floor, Laura replied that she did.
+
+"Then I've the pleasure of knowing your mother.--Tall dark woman, isn't
+she?"
+
+Under the table, Laura locked the palms of her hands and stemmed her
+feet against the floor. Was here, now, before them all, and Bob in
+particular, the shameful secret of the embroidery to come to light? She
+could hardly force her lips to frame an answer.
+
+Her confusion was too patent to be overlooked. Above her lowered head,
+signs passed between husband and wife, and soon afterwards the family
+rose from the table.
+
+But Tilly was so obviously sulky that the tense could not let
+her escape him thus.
+
+He cried: "For God's sake, Tilly, stand still! What on earth have you got
+on your back?"
+
+Tilly came from up-country and her thoughts leapt fearfully to scorpions
+and tarantulas. Affrighted, she tried to peer over her shoulder, and
+gave a preliminary shriek. "Gracious!--whatever is it?"
+
+"Hold on!" He approached her with the tongs; the next moment to
+ejaculate: "Begad, it's not a growth, it's a bustle!" and as he spoke he
+tweaked the place where a bustle used to be worn.
+
+Even Bob had to join in the ensuing boohoo, which went on and on till
+Laura thought the Uncle would fall down in a fit. Then for the third
+time he invited those present to join him in summoning the cats,
+murmured something about "humping his bluey", and went out into the hall,
+where they heard him swinging Thumbby "round the world".
+
+It was all the Aunt could do to mollify Tilly, who was enraged to the
+point of tears. "I've never worn a bustle in my life! Uncle's a perfect
+FOOL! I've never met such a fool as he is!"
+
+Still boiling, she disappeared to nurse her ruffled temper in private;
+and she remained absent from the room for over half an hour. During this
+time Laura and Bob were alone together. But even less than before came
+of their intercourse: Bob, still smarting from his father's banter, was
+inclined to be stand-offish, as though afraid Laura might take liberties
+with him after having been made to look so small; Laura, rendered
+thoroughly unsure to begin with, by the jocular tone of the
+luncheon-table, had not recovered from the shock of hearing her
+parentage so bluffly disclosed. And since, at this time, her idea of the
+art of conversation was to make jerky little remarks which led nowhere,
+or to put still more jerky questions, Bob was soon stifling yawns, and
+not with the best success. He infected Laura; and there the two of them
+sat, doing their best to appear unconscious of the terrible spasms
+which, every few seconds, distorted their faces. At last Bob could stand
+it no longer and bolted from the room.
+
+Laura was alone, and seemed to be forgotten The minutes ticked by, and
+no one came--or no one but a little grey kitten, which arrived as if
+from nowhere, with a hop and a skip. She coaxed the creature to her lap,
+where it joined head to tail and went to sleep. And there she sat, in
+the gloomy, overfilled drawing-room, and stroked the kitten, which
+neither cracked stupid jokes nor required her to strain her wits to make
+conversation.
+
+When at length Tilly came back, she expressed a rather acid surprise at
+Bob's absence, and went to look for him; Laura heard them whispering and
+laughing in the passage. On their return to the drawing-room it had been
+decided that the three of them should go for a walk. As the sky was
+overcast and the girls had no umbrellas, Bob carried a big one belonging
+to the Uncle. Tilly called this a "family umbrella"; and the jokes that
+were extracted from the pair of words lasted the walkers on the whole of
+their outward way; lasted so long that Laura, who was speedily finished
+with her contribution, grew quite stupefied with listening to the other
+two.
+
+Collins Street was now as empty as a bush road. The young people
+went into Bourke Street, where, for want of something better to do, they
+entered the Eastern Market and strolled about inside. The noise that
+rose from the livestock, on ground floor and upper storey, was
+ear-splitting: pigs grunted; cocks crowed, turkeys gobbled, parrots
+shrieked; while rough human voices echoed and re-echoed under the lofty
+roof. There was a smell, too, an extraordinary smell, composed of all
+the individual smells of all these living things: of fruit and
+vegetables, fresh and decayed; of flowers, and butter, and grain; of
+meat, and fish, and strong cheeses; of sawdust sprinkled with water, and
+freshly wet pavements--one great complicated smell, the piquancy of
+which made Laura sniff like a spaniel. But after a very few minutes
+Tilly, whose temper was still short, called it a "vile stink" and clapped
+her handkerchief to her nose, and so they hurried out, past many
+enticing little side booths hidden in dark corners on the ground floor,
+such as a woman without legs, a double-headed calf, and the like.
+
+Outside it had begun to rain; they turned into a Waxworks Exhibition.
+This was a poor show, and they were merely killing time when the
+announcement caught their eye that a certain room was open to "Married
+People Only". The quips and jokes this gave rise to again were as
+unending as those about the umbrella; and Laura grew so tired of them,
+and of pretending to find them funny, that her temper also began to give
+way; and she eased her feelings by making the nippy mental note on her
+companions, that jokes were evidently "in the blood".
+
+When they emerged, it was time for the girls to return to
+school. They took a hansom, Bob accompanying them. As they drove, Laura
+sitting sandwiched between the other two, it came over her with a rush
+what a miserable failure the day had been. A minute before, her spirits
+had given a faint flicker, for Bob had laid his arm along the back of
+the seat. Then she saw that he had done this just to pull at the little
+curls that grew on Tilly's neck. She was glad when the cab drew up, when
+Tilly ostentatiously took the fat half-crown from her purse, and Bob
+left them at the gate with a: "Well, so long, ladies!"
+
+The boarders spent the evening in sewing garments for charity. Laura had
+been at work for weeks on a coarse, red flannel petticoat, and as a rule
+was under constant reprimand for her idleness. On this night, having
+separated herself from Tilly, she sat down beside a girl with a very
+long plait of hair and small, narrow eyes, who went by the name of
+"Chinky". Chinky was always making up to her, and could be relied on to
+cover her silence. Laura sewed away, with bent head and pursed lips, and
+was so engrossed that the sole rebuke she incurred had to do with her
+diligence.
+
+Miss Chapman exclaimed in horror at her stiffly outstretched arm.
+
+"How CAN you be so vulgar, Laura? To sew with a thread as long as that!" 
+
+
+
+
+XV.
+
+
+
+For days Laura avoided even thinking of this unlucky visit. Privately,
+she informed herself that Tilly's wealthy relations were a "rude, stupid
+lot"; and, stuffing her fingers in her ears, memorised pages with a
+dispatch that deadened thought.
+
+When, however, the first smart had passed and she was able to go back on
+what had happened, a soreness at her own failure was the abiding result:
+and this, though Tilly mercifully spared her the "dull as ditchwater",
+that was Bob's final verdict.--But the fact that the invitation was not
+repeated told Laura enough.
+
+Her hurt was not relieved by the knowledge that she had done nothing to
+deserve it. For she had never asked for Bob's notice or admiration, had
+never thought of him but as a handsome cousin of Tilly's who sat in a
+distant pew at St Stephen's-on-the-Hill; and the circumstance that,
+because he had singled her out approvingly, she was expected to worm
+herself into his favour, seemed to her of a monstrous injustice. But,
+all the same, had she possessed the power to captivate him, she would
+cheerfully have put her pride in her pocket. For, having once seen him
+close at hand, she knew how desirable he was. Having been the object of
+glances from those liquid eyes, of smiles from those blanched-almond
+teeth, she found it hard to dismiss them from her mind. How the other
+girls would have boasted of it, had they been chosen by such a
+one as Bob!--they who, for the most part, were satisfied with
+blotchy-faced, red-handed youths, whose lean wrists dangled from their
+retreating sleeves. But then, too, they would have known how to keep
+him. Oh, those lucky other girls!
+
+"I say, Chinky, what do you do when a boy's gone on you?"
+
+She would have shrunk from putting an open question of this kind to her
+intimates; but Chinky, could be trusted. For she garnered the few words
+Laura vouchsafed her, as gratefully as Lazarus his crumbs; and a mark of
+confidence, such as this, would sustain her for days.
+
+But she had no information to give.
+
+"Me? . . . why, nothing. Boys are dirty, horrid, conceited creatures."
+
+In her heart Laura was at one with this judgment; but it was not to the
+point.
+
+"Yes, but s'pose one was awfully sweet on you and you rather liked him?"
+
+"Catch me! If one came bothering round me, I'd do this" and she set her
+ten outstretched fingers to her nose and waggled them.
+
+And yet Chinky was rather pretty, in her way.
+
+Maria Morell, cautiously tapped, threw back her head and roared with
+laughter.
+
+"Bless its little heart! Does it want to know?--say, Laura, who's your
+mash?"
+
+"No one," answered Laura stoutly. "I only asked. For I guess you KNOW,
+Maria."
+
+"By gosh, you bet I do!" cried Maria, italicising the words in her
+vehemence. "Well, look here, Kiddy, if a chap's sweet on me I let him be
+sweet, my dear, and that's all--till he's run to barley-sugar.
+What I don't let him savvy is, whether I care a twopenny damn for him.
+Soon as you do that, it's all up. Just let him hang round, and throw
+sheep's-eyes, till he's as soft as a jellyfish, and when he's right down
+ripe, roaring mad, go off and pretend to do a mash with some one else.
+That's the way to glue him, chicken."
+
+"But you don't have anything of him that way," objected Laura.
+
+Maria laughed herself red in the face. "What'n earth more d'you want?
+Why, he'll pester you with letters, world without end, and look as black
+as your shoe if you so much as wink at another boy. As for a kiss, if he
+gets a chance of one he'll take it you can bet your bottom dollar on
+that."
+
+"But you never get to know him!"
+
+"Oh, hang it, Laura, but you ARE rich! What d'you think one has a boy
+for, I'd like to know. To parlezvous about old Shepherd's sermons? You
+loony, it's only for getting lollies, and letters, and the whole dashed
+fun of the thing. If you go about too much with one, you soon have to
+fake an interest in his rotten old affairs. Or else just hold your
+tongue and let him blow. And that's dull work. D'you think it ever comes
+up a fellow's back to talk to you about your new Sunday hat! If it does,
+you can teach your grandmother to suck eggs."
+
+But, despite this wisdom, Laura could not determine how Maria would have
+acted had she stood in her shoes.
+
+And then, too, the elder girl had said nothing about another side of the
+question, had not touched on the sighs and simpers, the winged
+glances, and drooped, provocative lids--all the thousand and one
+fooleries, in short, which Laura saw her and others employ. There was a
+regular machinery of invitation and encouragement to be set in motion:
+for, before it was safe to ignore a wooer and let him dangle, as Maria
+advised, you had first to make quite sure he wished to nibble your bait.
+--And it was just in this elementary science that Laura broke down.
+
+Looking round her, she saw mainly experts. To take the example nearest
+at hand: there was Monsieur Legros, the French master; well, Maria could
+twist him round her little finger. She only needed to pout her thick,
+red lips, or to give a coquettish twist to her plump figure, or to ogle
+him with her fine, bold, blue eyes, and the difficult questions in the
+lesson were sure to pass her by.--Once she had even got ten extra marks
+added to an examination paper, in this easy fashion. Whereas, did she,
+Laura, try to imitate Maria, venture to pout or to smirk, it was ten to
+one she would be rebuked for impertinence. No, she got on best with the
+women-teachers, to whom red lips and a full bust meant nothing; while
+the most elderly masters could not be relied on to be wholly impartial,
+where a pair of magnificent eyes was concerned. Even Mr. Strachey, the
+unapproachable, had been known, on running full tilt into a pretty
+girl's arms in an unlit passage, to be laughingly confused. 
+
+Laura was not, of course, the sole outsider in these things; sprinkled
+through the College were various others, older, too, than she, who by
+reason of demureness of temperament, or immersion in their work, stood
+aloof. But they were lost in the majority, and, as it chanced,
+none of them belonged to Laura's circle. Except Chinky--and Chinky did
+not count. So, half-fascinated, half-repelled, Laura set to studying her
+friends with renewed zeal. She could not help admiring their proficiency
+in the art of pleasing, even though she felt a little abashed by the
+open pride they took in their growing charms. There was Bertha, for
+instance, Bertha who had one of the nicest minds of them all; and yet
+how frankly gratified she was, by the visible rounding of her arms and
+the curving of her bust. She spoke of it to Laura with a kind of awe;
+and her voice seemed to give hints of a coming mystery. Tilly, on the
+other hand, lived to reduce her waist-measure: she was always sucking at
+lemons, and she put up with the pains of indigestion as well as a red
+tip to her nose; for no success in school meant as much to Tilly as the
+fact that she had managed to compress herself a further quarter of an
+inch, no praise on the part of her teachers equalled the compliments
+this earned her from dressmaker and tailor. As for Inez, who had not
+only a pretty face but was graceful and slender-limbed as a greyhound,
+Inez no longer needed to worry over artificial charms, or to dwell
+self-consciously on her development; serious admirers were not lacking,
+and with one of these, a young man some eight years older than herself,
+she had had for the past three months a sort of understanding. For her,
+as for so many others, the time she had still to spend at school was as
+purgatory before paradise. To top all, one of the day-scholars in
+Laura's class was actually engaged to be married; and in no boy-and-girl
+fashion, but to a doctor who lived and practised in Emerald Hill: he
+might sometimes be seen, from a peephole under the stairs,
+waiting to escort her home from school. This fiancee was looked up to by
+the class with tremendous reverence, as one set apart, oiled and
+anointed. You really could not treat her as a comrade her, who had
+reached the goal. For this WAS the goal; and the thoughts of all were
+fixed, with an intentness that varied only in degree, on the great
+consummation which, as planned in these young minds, should come to pass
+without fail directly the college-doors closed behind them.--And here
+again Laura was a heretic. For she could not contemplate the future that
+was to be hers when she had finished her education, but with a feeling
+of awe: it was still so distant as to be one dense blue haze; it was so
+vast, that thinking of it took your breath away: there was room in it
+for the most wonderful miracles that had ever happened; it might contain
+anything--from golden slippers to a Jacob's ladder, by means of which
+you would scale the skies; and with these marvellous perhapses awaiting
+you, it was impossible to limit your hopes to one single event, which,
+though it saved you from derision, would put an end, for ever, to all
+possible, exciting contingencies.
+
+These thoughts came and went. In the meantime, despite her ape-like
+study of her companions, she remained where the other sex was concerned
+a disheartening failure. A further incident drove this home anew.
+
+One Saturday afternoon, those boarders who had not been invited out were
+taken to see a cricket-match. They were a mere handful, eight or nine at
+most, and Miss Snodgrass alone was in charge. All her friends [P.154]
+being away that day, Laura had to bring up the rear with the governess
+and one of the little girls. Though their walk led them through pleasant
+parks, she was glad when it was over; for she did not enjoy Miss
+Snodgrass's company. She was no match for this crisply sarcastic
+governess, and had to be the whole time on her guard. For Miss Snodgrass
+was not only a great talker, but had also a very inquiring mind, and
+seemed always trying to ferret out just those things you did not care to
+tell--such as the size of your home, or the social position you
+occupied in the township where you lived.
+
+Arrived at the cricket ground, they climbed the Grand Stand and sat down
+in one of the back rows, to the rear of the other spectators. Before
+them sloped a steep bank of hats gaily-flowered and ribbon-banded hats--
+of light and dark shoulders, of alert, boyish profiles and pale, pretty
+faces--a representative gathering of young Australia, bathed in the
+brilliant March light.
+
+Laura's seat was between her two companions, and it was here the malheur
+occurred. During an interval in the game, one of the girls asked the
+governess's leave to speak to her cousin; and thereupon a shy lad was
+the target for twenty eyes. He was accompanied by a friend, who, in
+waiting, sat down just behind Laura. This boy was addressed by Miss
+Snodgrass; but he answered awkwardly, and after a pause, Laura felt
+herself nudged.
+
+"You can speak to him, Laura," whispered Miss Snodgrass.--She evidently
+thought Laura waited only for permission, to burst in.
+
+Laura had already fancied that the boy looked at her with
+interest. This was not improbable; for she had her best hat on, which
+made her eyes seem very dark--"like sloes," Chinky said, though neither
+of them had any clear idea what a sloe was.
+
+Still, a prompting to speech invariably tied her tongue. She half
+turned, and stole an uneasy peep at the lad. He might be a year older
+than herself; he had a frank, sunburnt face, blue eyes, and almost white
+flaxen hair. She took heart of grace.
+
+"I s'pose you often come here?" she ventured at last.
+
+"You bet!" said the boy; but kept his eyes where they were on the pitch.
+
+"Cricket's a lovely game . . . don't you think so?"
+
+Now he looked at her; but doubtfully, from the height of his fourteen
+male years; and did not reply.
+
+"Do you play?"
+
+This was a false move, she felt it at once. Her question seemed to
+offend him. "Should rather think I did!" he answered with a haughty air.
+
+Weakly she hastened to retract her words. "Oh, I meant much--if you
+played much?"
+
+"Comes to the same thing I guess," said the boy--he had not yet reached
+the age of obligatory politeness.
+
+"It must be splendid"--here she faltered--"fun."
+
+But the boy's thoughts had wandered: he was making signs to a friend
+down in the front of the Stand.--Miss Snodgrass seemed to repress a
+smile.
+
+Here, however, the little girl at Laura's side chimed in. "I think
+cricket's awful rot," she announced, in a cheepy voice.
+
+Now what was it, Laura asked herself, in these words, or in the
+tone in which they were said, that at once riveted the boy's attention.
+For he laughed quite briskly as he asked; "What's a kid like you know
+about it?"
+
+"Jus' as much as I want to. An' my sister says so 's well."
+
+"Get along with you! Who's your sister?"
+
+"Ooh!--wouldn't you like to know? You've never seen her in Scots'
+Church on Sundays I s'pose--oh, no!"
+
+"By jingo!--I should say I have. An' you, too. You're the little sister
+of that daisy with the simply ripping hair."
+
+The little girl actually made a grimace at him, screwing up her
+nose. "Yes, you can be civil now, can't you?"
+
+"My aunt, but she's a tip-topper--your sister!"
+
+"You go to Scots' Church then, do you?" hazarded Laura, in an attempt to
+re-enter the conversation.
+
+"Think I could have seen her if I didn't?" retorted the boy, in the tone
+of: "What a fool question!" He also seemed to have been on the point of
+adding: "Goose," or "Sillybones."
+
+The little girl giggled. "She's church"--by which she meant
+episcopalian.
+
+"Yes, but I don't care a bit which I go to," Laura hastened to explain,
+fearful lest she should be accounted a snob by this dissenter. The boy,
+however, was so faintly interested in her theological wobblings that,
+even as she spoke, he had risen from his seat; and the next moment
+without another word he went away.--This time Miss Snodgrass laughed
+outright.
+
+Laura stared, with blurred eyes, at the white-clad forms that
+began to dot the green again. Her lids smarted. She did not dare to put
+up her fingers to squeeze the gathering tears away, and just as she was
+wondering what she should do if one was inconsiderate enough to roll
+down her cheek, she heard a voice behind her.
+
+"I say, Laura . . . Laura!"--and there was Chinky, in her best white
+hat.
+
+"I'm sitting with my aunt just a few rows down; but I couldn't make you
+look. Can I come in next to you for a minute?"
+
+"If you like," said Laura and, because she had to sniff a little, very
+coldly: Chinky had no doubt also been a witness of her failure.
+
+The girl squeezed past and shared her seat. "I don't take up much room."
+
+Laura feigned to be engrossed in the game. But presently she felt her
+bare wrist touched, and Chinky said in her ear: "What pretty hands you've
+got, Laura!"
+
+She buried them in her dress, at this. She found it in the worst
+possible taste of Chinky to try to console her.
+
+"Wouldn't you like to wear a ring on one of them?"
+
+"No, thanks," said Laura, in the same repellent way.
+
+"Truly? I'd love to give you one."
+
+"You? Where would YOU get it?"
+
+"Would you wear it, if I did?"
+
+"Let me see it first," was Laura's graceless reply, as she returned to
+her stony contemplation of the great sunlit expanse.
+
+She was sure Miss Snodgrass, on getting home, would laugh with
+the other governesses over what had occurred--if not with some of the
+girls. The story would leak out and come to Tilly's ears; and Tilly
+would despise her more than she did already. So would all the rest. She
+was branded, as it was, for not having a single string to her bow. Now,
+it had become plain to her that she could never hope for one; for, when
+it came to holding a boy's attention for five brief minutes, she could
+be put in the shade by a child of eight years old. 
+
+
+
+
+XVI.
+
+
+
+Since, however, it seemed that some one had to be loved if you were to
+be able to hold up your head with the rest, then it was easier,
+infinitely easier, to love the curate. With the curate, no personal
+contact was necessary--and that was more than could be said even of the
+music-masters. In regard to them, pressures of the hand, as well as
+countless nothings, were expected and enacted, in the bi-weekly reports
+you rendered to those of your friends who followed the case. Whereas for
+the curate it was possible to simulate immense ardour, without needing
+either to humble your pride or call invention to your aid: the worship
+took place from afar. The curate was, moreover, no unworthy object;
+indeed he was quite attractive, in a lean, ascetic fashion, with his
+spiritual blue eyes, and the plain gold cross that dangled from his
+black watch-ribbon--though, it must be admitted, when he preached, and
+grew greatly in earnest, his mouth had a way of opening as if it meant
+to swallow the church--and Laura was by no means his sole admirer.
+Several of her friends had a fancy for him, especially as his wife, who
+was much older than he, was a thin, elderly lady with a tired face.
+
+And now, by her own experience, Laura was led to the following
+discovery: that, if you imagine a thing with sufficient force, you can
+induce your imagining to become reality. By dint of pretending that it
+was so, she gradually worked herself up into an attack of love,
+which was genuine enough to make her redden when Mr. Shepherd was spoken
+of, and to enjoy being teased about him. And since, at any rate when in
+church, she was a sincerely religious little girl, and one to whom--
+notwithstanding her protested indifference to forms of worship--such
+emotional accessories as flowers, and music, and highly coloured
+vestments made a strong appeal, her feelings for Mr. Shepherd were soon
+mystically jumbled up with her piety: the eastward slant for the Creed,
+and the Salutation at the Sacred Name, seemed not alone homage due to
+the Deity, but also a kind of minor homage offered to and accepted by
+Mr. Shepherd; the school-pew being so near the chancel that it was not
+difficult to believe yourself the recipient of personal notice.
+
+At home during the winter holidays, his name chanced to cross her lips.
+Straightway it occurred to Mother that he was the nephew of an old
+friend whom she had long lost sight of letters passed between Warrenega
+and Melbourne, and shortly after her return to the College Laura learnt
+that she was to spend the coming monthly holiday at Mr. Shepherd's
+house.
+
+In the agitated frame of mind this threw her into, she did not know
+whether to be glad or sorry. Her feelings had, of late, got into such a
+rapt and pious muddle that it seemed a little like being asked out to
+meet God. On the other hand, she could not but see that the circumstance
+would raise her standing at school, immeasurably. And this it did. As
+soon as the first shock had passed she communicated the fact freely, and
+was shrewd enough not to relate how the invitation had come about,
+allowing it to be put down, as her friends were but too ready to
+do, to the effect produced on the minister by her silent adoration.
+
+The Church girls were wild with envy. Laura was dragged up the garden
+with an arm thrust through each of hers. Mr. Shepherd's holy calling and
+spiritual appearance stood him in small stead here; and the blackest
+interpretation was put on the matter of the visit.
+
+"Nice things you'll be up to, the pair of you--oh, my aunt!" ejaculated
+Maria.
+
+"I think it's beastly risky her going at all," filled in Kate Horner,
+gobbling a little; for her upper lip overhung the lower. "These saints
+are oftenest bad 'uns."
+
+"Yes, and with an Aunt Sally like that for a wife.--Now look here,
+Kiddy, just you watch you're not left alone with him in the dark."
+
+"And mind, you've got to tell us everything--every blessed thing!"
+
+Laura was called for, on Saturday morning, by the maiden sister of her
+divinity. Miss Isabella Shepherd was a fair, short, pleasant young
+woman, with a nervous, kindly smile, and a congenital inability to look
+you in the face when speaking to you; so that the impression she made
+was that of a perpetual friendliness, directed, however, not at you, but
+at the inanimate objects around you. Laura was so tickled by this
+peculiarity, which she spied the moment she entered the waiting-room,
+that at first she could take in nothing else. Afterwards, when the
+novelty had worn off, she subjected her companion to a closer scrutiny,
+and from the height of thirteen years had soon taxed her with being a
+frumpish old maid; the valiant but feeble efforts Miss Isabella
+made to entertain her, as they walked along, only strengthening her in
+this opinion.
+
+Not very far from the College they entered a small, two-storied stone
+house, which but for an iron railing and a shrub or two gave right on
+the street.
+
+"Will you come up to the study?" said Miss Isabella, smiling warmly, and
+ogling the door-mat. "I'm sure Robby would like to see you at once."
+
+Robby? Her saint called Robby?--Laura blushed.
+
+But at the head of the stairs they were brought up short by Mrs.
+Shepherd, who, policeman-like, raised a warning hand.
+
+"Hssh . . . ssh . . . sh!" she breathed, and simultaneously half-closed
+her eyes, as if imitating slumber. "Robby has just lain down for a few
+minutes. How are you, dear?"--in a whisper. "I'm so pleased to see
+you."
+
+She looked even more faded than in church. But she was very kind, and in
+the bedroom insisted on getting out a clean towel for Laura.
+
+"Now we'll go down.--It's only lunch to-day, for Robby has a
+confirmation-class immediately afterwards, and doesn't care to eat
+much."
+
+They descended to the dining-room, but though the meal was served, did
+not take their seats: they stood about, in a kind of anxious silence.
+This lasted for several minutes; then, heavy footsteps were heard
+trampling overhead: these persisted, but did not seem to advance, and at
+length there was a loud, impatient shout of: "Maisie!"
+
+Both ladies were perceptibly flurried. "He can't find something," said
+Miss Isabella in a stage-whisper; while Mrs. Shepherd, taking
+the front of her dress in both hands, set out for the stairs with the
+short, clumsy jerks which, in a woman, pass for running.
+
+A minute or two later the origin of the fluster came in, looking, it
+must be confessed, not much more amiable than his voice had been: he was
+extremely pale, too, his blue eyes had hollow rings round them, and
+there were tired wrinkles on his forehead. However he offered Laura a
+friendly hand which she took with her soul in her eyes.
+
+"Well, and so this is the young lady fresh from the halls of learning,
+is it?" he asked, after a mumbled grace, as he carved a rather naked
+mutton-bone: the knife caught in the bone; he wrenched it free with an
+ill-natured tweak. "And what do they teach you at college, miss, eh?" he
+went on. "French? . . . Greek? . . . Latin? How goes it? INFANDUM,
+REGINA, JUBES RENOVARE DOLOREM--isn't that the way of it? And
+then . . . let me see! It's so long since I went to school, you know."
+
+"TROJANAS UT OPES ET LAMENTABILE REGNUM ERUERINT DANAI," said Laura,
+almost blind with pride and pleasure.
+
+"Well, well, well!" he exclaimed, in what seemed tremendous surprise;
+but, even as she spoke, his thoughts were swept away; for he had taken
+up a mustard-pot and found it empty. "Yes, yes, here we are again! Not a
+scrap of mustard on the table. "--His voice was angrily resigned.
+
+"With MUTTON, Robby dear?" ventured Mrs. Shepherd, with the utmost
+humbleness.
+
+"With mutton if I choose!" he retorted violently. "WILL you,
+Maisie, be kind enough to allow me to know my own tastes best, and not
+dictate to me what I shall eat?"
+
+But Mrs. Shepherd, murmuring: "Oh dear! it's that dreadful girl," had
+already made a timid spring at the bell.
+
+"Poor Robby . . . so rushed again!" said Isabella in a reproachful tone.
+
+"And while she's here she may bring the water and the glasses as well,"
+snarled the master of the house, who had run a flaming eye over the
+table.
+
+"Tch, tch, tch!" said Mrs. Shepherd, with so little spirit that Laura
+felt quite sorry for her.
+
+"REALLY, Maisie!" said Miss Isabella. "And when the poor boy's so
+rushed, too."
+
+This guerilla warfare continued throughout luncheon, and left Laura
+wondering why, considering the dearth of time, and the distress of the
+ladies at each fresh contretemps, they did not jump up and fetch the
+missing articles themselves--as Mother would have done--instead of
+each time ringing the bell and waiting for the appearance of the saucy,
+unwilling servant. As it turned out, however, their behaviour had a
+pedagogic basis. It seemed that they hoped, by constantly summoning the
+maid, to sharpen her memory. But Mrs. Shepherd was also implicated in
+the method; and this was the reason why Isabella--as she afterwards
+explained to Laura--never offered her a thimbleful of help.
+
+"My sister-in-law is nothing of a manager," she said. "But we still trust
+she will improve in time, if she always has her attention drawn to her
+forgetfulness--at least Robby does; I'm afraid I have rather [P.165]
+given her up. But Robby's patience is angelic." And Laura was of the
+same opinion, since the couple had been married for more than seven
+years.
+
+The moment the meal, which lasted a quarter of an hour, was over, Mr.
+Shepherd clapped on his shovel-hat and started, with long strides, for
+his class, Mrs. Shepherd, who had not been quite ready, scuttling along
+a hundred yards behind him, with quick, fussy steps, and bonnet an awry.
+
+Laura and Isabella stood at the gate.
+
+"I ought really to have gone, too," said Isabella, and smiled at the
+gutter. "But as you are here, Robby said I had better stay at home
+to-day.--Now what would you like to do?"
+
+This opened up a dazzling prospect, with the whole of Melbourne before
+one. But Laura was too polite to pretend anything but indifference.
+
+"Well, perhaps you wouldn't mind staying in then? I want so much to copy
+out Robby's sermon. I always do it, you know, for he can't read his own
+writing. But he won't expect it to-day and he'll be so pleased."
+
+It was a cool, quiet little house, with the slightly unused smell in the
+rooms that betokens a lack of children. Laura did not dislike the quiet,
+and sat contentedly in the front parlour till evening fell. Not,
+however, that she was really within hundreds of miles of Melbourne; for
+the wonderful book that she held on her knee was called KING SOLOMON'S
+MINES, and her eyes never rose from the pages.
+
+Supper, when it came, was as scrappy and as hurried as lunch had been: a
+class of working-men was momently expected, and Robby had just time to
+gulp down a cup of tea. Nor could he converse; for he was
+obliged to spare his throat.
+
+Afterwards the three of them sat listening to the loud talking overhead.
+This came down distinctly through the thin ceiling, and Mr. Shepherd's
+voice--it went on and on--sounded, at such close quarters, both harsh
+and rasping. Mrs. Shepherd was mending a stole; Isabella stooped over
+the sermon, which she was writing like copperplate. Laura sat in a
+corner with her hands before her: she had finished her book, but her
+eyes were still visionary. When any of the three spoke, it was in a low
+tone.
+
+Towards nine o'clock Mrs. Shepherd fetched a little saucepan, filled it
+with milk, and set it on the hob; and after this she hovered undecidedly
+between door and fireplace, like a distracted moth.
+
+"Now do try to get it right to-night, Maisie," admonished Isabella; and,
+turning her face, if not her glance, to Laura, she explained: "It must
+boil, but not have a scrap of skin on it, or Robby won't look at it."
+
+Presently the working-men were heard pounding down the stairs, and
+thereupon Maisie vanished from the room.
+
+The next day Laura attended morning and evening service at St
+Stephen's-on-the-Hill, and in the afternoon made one of Isabella's class
+at Sunday school.
+
+That morning she had wakened, in what seemed to be the middle of the
+night, to find Isabella dressing by the light of a single candle.
+
+"Don't you get up," said the latter. "We're all going to early service,
+and I just want to make Robby some bread and milk beforehand. He would
+rather communicate fasting, but he has to have something, for he
+doesn't get home till dinner-time."
+
+When midday came, Robby was very fractious. The mutton-bone--no cooking
+was done--was harder than ever to carve with decency; and poor Mrs.
+Shepherd, for sheer fidgetiness, could hardly swallow a bite.
+
+But at nine o'clock that evening, when the labours of the day were
+behind him, he was persuaded to lie down on the sofa and drink a glass
+of port. At his head sat Mrs. Shepherd, holding the wine and some
+biscuits; at his feet Isabella, stroking his soles. The stimulant
+revived him; he grew quite mellow, and presently, taking his wife's
+hand, he held it in his--and Laura felt sure that all his querulousness
+was forgiven him for the sake of this moment. Then, finding a willing
+listener in the black-eyed little girl who sat before him, he began to
+talk, to relate his travels, giving, in particular, a vivid account of
+some months he had once spent in Japan. Laura, who liked nothing better
+than travelling at second hand--since any other way was out of the
+question--Laura spent a delightful hour, and said so.
+
+"Yes, Robby quite surpassed himself to-night, I thought," said Isabella
+as she let down her hair. "I never heard anyone who could talk as well as
+he does when he likes.--Can you keep a secret, Laura? We are sure,
+Maisie and I, that Robby will be a Bishop some day. And he means to be,
+himself.--But don't say a word about it; he won't have it mentioned out
+of the house.--And meanwhile he's working as hard as he can, and we're
+saving every penny, to let him take his next degree."
+
+"I do hope you'll come again," she said the following morning,
+as they walked back to the College. "I don't mind telling you now, I felt
+quite nervous when Robby said we were to ask you. I've had no experience
+of little girls. But you haven't been the least trouble--not a bit. And
+I'm sure it was good for Robby having something young about the house.
+So mind you write and tell us when you have another holiday"--and
+Isabella's smile beamed out once more, none the less kindly because it
+was caught, on its way to Laura, by the gate they were passing through.
+
+Laura, whose mind was set on a good, satisfying slab of cake, promised
+to do this, although her feelings had suffered so great a change that
+she was not sure whether she would keep her word. She was pulled two
+ways: on the one side was the remembrance of Mr. Shepherd hacking
+cantankerously at the bare mutton-bone; on the other, the cherry-blossom
+and the mousmes of Japan. 
+
+
+
+
+XVII.
+
+
+
+OHNMACHT ZUR LUGE IST LANGE NOCH NICHT LIEBE ZUR WAHRHEIT. . . . WER
+NICHT LUGEN KANN, WEISS NICHT, WAS WAHRHEIT IST.
+
+NIETZSCHE
+
+
+A pantomime of knowing smiles and interrogatory grimaces greeted her,
+when, having brushed the cake-crumbs from her mouth, she joined her
+class. For the twinkling of an eye Laura hesitated, being unprepared.
+Then, however, as little able as a comic actor to resist pandering to
+the taste of the public, she yielded to this hunger for spicy
+happenings, and did what was expected of her: clapped her hands, one
+over the other, to her breast, and cast her eyes heavenwards. Curiosity
+and anticipation reached a high pitch; while Laura, by tragically
+shaking her head, gave it to be understood that no signs could transmit
+what she had been through, since seeing her friends last.
+
+In the thick of this message she was, unluckily, caught by Dr Pughson,
+who, after dealing her one of his butcherly gibes, bade her to the
+blackboard, to grapple with the Seventh Proposition.
+
+The remainder of the forenoon was a tussle with lessons not glanced at
+since Friday night.--Besides, Laura seldom forestalled events by
+thinking over them, choosing rather to trust for inspiration to the spur
+of the moment.
+
+Morning school at an end, she was laid hands on and hurried off to a
+retired corner of the garden. Here, four friends squatted round,
+determined to extract her adventures from her--to the last pip.
+
+Laura was in a pretty pickle. Did she tell the plain truth, state the
+pedestrian facts--and this she would have been capable of doing with
+some address; for she had looked through her hosts with a perspicacity
+uncommon in a girl of her age; had once again put to good use those
+'sharp, unkind eyes' which Mother deplored. She had seen an overworked,
+underfed man, who nagged like any woman, and made slaves of two weak,
+adoring ladies; and she very well knew that, as often as her thoughts in
+future alighted on Mr. Robby, she would think of him pinching and
+screwing, with a hawk-like eye on a shadowy bishopric. Of her warm
+feelings for him, genuine or imaginary, not a speck remained. The first
+touch of reality had sunk them below her ken, just as a drop of cold
+water sinks the floating grounds in a coffee-pot . . . But did she
+confess this, confess also that, save for a handful of monosyllables,
+her only exchange of words with him had been a line of Virgil; and,
+still more humbling, that she had liked his wife and sister better than
+himself: did this come to light, she would forfeit every sou of the
+prestige the visit had lent and yet promised to lend her. And, now that
+the possible moment for parting with this borrowed support had come, she
+recognised how greatly she had built on it.
+
+These thoughts whizzed through her mind, as she darted a look at the
+four predatory faces that hemmed her in. Tilly's was one of them: the
+lightly mocking smile sat on it that Laura had come to know so well,
+since her maladroit handling of Bob. She would kill that smile--and if
+she had to die for it herself.
+
+Still, she must be cautious, wary in picking her steps.
+Especially as she had not the ghost of an idea how to begin.
+
+Meanwhile cries of impatience buzzed round her.
+
+"She doesn't want to tell."
+
+"Mean brute!"
+
+"Shouldn't wonder if it's too dashed shady."
+
+"Didn't I SAY he was a bad 'un?"
+
+"I bet you there's nothing to tell," said Tilly cockily, and turned up
+her nose.
+
+"Yes, there is," flung out Laura, at once put on the defensive, and as
+she spoke she coloured.
+
+"Look at her! Look how red she's got!"
+
+"And after she promised--the sneak!"
+
+"I'm not a sneak. I AM going to tell. But you're all in such a blooming
+hurry."
+
+"Oh, fire away, slow-coach!"
+
+"Well, girls," began Laura gamely, breathing a little hard.--"But,
+mind, you must never utter a word of what I'm going to tell you. It's a
+dead secret, and IF you let on----"
+
+"S' help me God!"
+
+"Ananias and Sapphira!"
+
+"Oh, DO hurry up."
+
+"Well . . . well, he's just the most--oh, I don't know how to say it,
+girls--the MOST----"
+
+"Just scrumptious, I suppose, eh?"
+
+"Just positively scrumptious, and . . ."
+
+"And what'd he do?"
+
+"And what about his old sketch of a wife?"
+
+"Her? Oh"--and Laura squeezed herself desperately for the details that
+WOULD not come--"oh, why she's just a perfect old . . . old cat.
+And twenty years older than him."
+
+"What on earth did he marry her for?"
+
+"Guess he's pretty sick of being tied to an old gin like that?"
+
+"I should say! Perfectly MISERABLE. He can't think now why he let
+himself be induced to marry her. He just despises her."
+
+"Well, why in the name of all that's holy did he take her?"
+
+Laura cast a mysterious glance round, and lowered her voice. "Well, you
+see, she had LOTS of money and he had none. He was ever so poor. And she
+paid for him to be a clergyman."
+
+"Go on! As poor as all that?"
+
+"As poor as a church-mouse.--But, oh," she hastened to add, at the
+visible cooling-off of the four faces, "he comes of a MOST distinguished
+family. His father was a lord or a baronet or something like that, but
+he married a beautiful girl who hadn't a penny against his father's will
+and so he cut him out of his will."
+
+"I say!"
+
+"Oh, never mind the father."
+
+"Yes. Well, now he feels under an awful obligation to her, and all that
+sort of thing, you know."
+
+"And she drives it home, I bet. She looks a nipper."
+
+"Is always throwing it in his face."
+
+"What a ghoul!"
+
+"He'd do just ANYTHING to get rid of her, but--Girls, it's a dead
+secret; you must swear you won't tell."
+
+Gestures of assurance were showered on her.
+
+"Well, he's to be a Bishop some day. It's promised him."
+
+"Holy Moses!"
+
+"And I suppose he can't divorce her, because of that?"
+
+"No, of course not. He'll have to drag her with him like millstone round
+his neck."
+
+"And he'd twigged right enough you were gone on him?"
+
+Laura's coy smile hinted many things. "I should say so. Since the very
+first day in church. He said--but I don't like to tell you what he
+said."
+
+"You must!"
+
+"No. You'll only call me conceited."
+
+"No fear, Kiddy. Out with it!"
+
+"Well, then, he said he saw me as soon as he got in the pulpit, and he
+wondered ever so much who the girl was with the eyes like sloes, and the
+skin like . . . like cream."
+
+"Snakes-alive-oh! He went it strong."
+
+"And how often were you alone with him?"
+
+"Yes, and if he had met me before he was married--but no, I can't tell
+any more."
+
+"Oh, don't be such an ass!"
+
+"No, I can't.--Well, I'll whisper it then . . . but only to Maria," and
+leaning over Laura put her lips to Maria's ear.
+
+The reason for this by-stroke she could not have told: the detail she
+imparted did not differ substantially from those that had gone before.--
+But by now she was at the end of her tether.
+
+Here, fortunately for Laura, the dinner-bell rang, and the girls
+had to take to their heels in order to get their books put away before
+grace. Throughout the meal, from their scattered seats, they exchanged
+looks of understanding, and their cheeks were pink.
+
+In the afternoon, Laura was again called on to prove her mettle. Her
+companion on the daily walk was Kate Horner. Kate had been one of the
+four, and did not lose this chance of beating up fresh particulars.
+
+After those first few awkward moments, however, which had come wellnigh
+being a fiasco, Laura had no more trouble with her story. Indeed, the
+plunge once taken, it was astounding how easy it became to make up
+things about the Shepherds; the difficulty was, to know where to stop.
+Fictitious details crowded thick and fast upon her--a regular
+hotchpotch; she had only to stretch out her hand and seize what she
+needed. It was simpler than the five-times multiplication-table, and did
+not need to be learnt. But all the same she was not idle: she polished
+away at her flimflams, bringing them nearer and nearer probability,
+never, thanks to her sound memory, contradicting herself or making a
+slip, and always able to begin again from the beginning.
+
+Such initial scepticism as may have lurked in her hearers was soon got
+the better of. For, crass realists though these young colonials were,
+and bluntly as they faced facts, they were none the less just as hungry
+for romance as the most insatiable novel-reader. Romance in any guise
+was hailed by them, and swallowed uncritically, though it was no more
+permitted to interfere with the practical conduct of their lives than it
+is in the case of just that novel-reader, who puts untruth and
+unreality from him, when he lays his book aside.--Another and weightier
+reason was, their slower brains could not conceive the possibility of
+such extraordinarily detailed lying as that to which Laura now subjected
+them. Its very elaboration stood for its truth.
+
+And the days passed, and Laura had the happiest ideas. A strange thing
+about them was that they came to her quite unsought, dropping on her
+like Aladdin's oranges on his turban. All she had to do was to fit them
+into their niche in her fabrication.
+
+At first, her tale had been chiefly concerned with the internal rift in
+Mr. Shepherd's home-life, and only in a minor degree with herself. But
+her public savoured the love-story most, and hence, consulting its
+taste, as it is the tale-maker's bounden duty to do, Laura was obliged
+to develop this side of her narrative at the expense of the other. And
+the more the girls heard, the more they wished to hear. She had early
+turned Miss Isabella into a staunch ally of her own, in the dissension
+she had introduced into the curate's household; and one day she arrived
+at a hasty kiss, stolen in the vestry after evening service, while Mr.
+Shepherd was taking off his surplice. The puzzle had been, to get
+herself into the vestry; but, once there, she saw what followed as if it
+had actually happened. She saw Mr. Shepherd's arm slipped with diffident
+alacrity round her waist, and her own virtuous recoil; saw Maisie and
+Isabella waiting, sheep-like, in their pew, till it should please the
+couple to emerge; saw the form of the verger moving about the darkening
+church, as he put the lights out, one by one.
+
+But the success this incident brought her turned Laura's head,
+making her so foolhardy in her inventions that Maria, who for all her
+boldness of speech was at heart a prude like the rest, grew uneasy.
+
+"You're not to go to that house again, Kiddy. If you do, I'll peach to
+old Gurley."
+
+Laura ran upstairs to dress for tea, taking two steps at a time. On the
+top landing, beside the great clothes-baskets, she collided with Chinky,
+who was coming primly down.
+
+"O ki, John!" she greeted her, being in a vast good-humour. "What do you
+look so black for?"
+
+"Dunno. Why do you never walk with me nowadays, Laura? I say, you know
+about that ring? You haven't forgotten?"
+
+"Course not. When am I to get it? It never turns up." Her eyes glittered
+as she asked, for she foresaw a further link in her chain. "Soon, now?"
+
+Chinky nodded mysteriously. "Pretty soon. And you promise faithfully
+never to take it off?"
+
+"But it must be a NICE one . . . with a red stone in it. And listen,
+Chink, no one must ever know it was you who gave it me."
+
+"All right, I swear. You're a darling to say you'll wear it," and
+putting her arm round Laura's shoulders, Chinky gave her a hearty kiss.
+
+This was more than Laura had bargained for;--she freed herself,
+ungraciously. "Oh, don't!--now mind, a red stone, and for the third
+finger of the left hand."
+
+"Yes. And Laura, I've thought of something to put inside. SEMPER
+EADEM . . . do you like that, Laura?"
+
+"It'll do.--Look out, there's old Day!" and leaving Chinky standing,
+she ran down the corridor to her room. 
+
+
+
+
+XVIII.
+
+
+
+DER VERBRECHER IST HAUFIG GENUG SEINER TAT NICHT GEWACHSEN.
+
+NIETZSCHE
+
+
+For a month or more, Laura fed like a honeybee on the sweets of success.
+And throve--even to the blindest eye. What had hitherto been lacking
+was now hers: the admiration and applause of her circle. And never was a
+child so spurred and uplifted by praise as Laura. Without it, her nature
+tended to be wary and unproductive; and those in touch with her, had
+they wished to make the most of her, would no more have stinted with the
+necessary incentive, that one stints a delicate rose tree in aids to
+growth. Laura could swallow praise in large doses, without becoming
+over-sure. Under the present stimulus she sat top in a couple of
+classes, grew slightly ruddier in face, and much less shrinking in
+manner.
+
+"Call her back at once and make her shut that door," cried Miss Day
+thickly, from behind one of the long, dining-hall tables, on which were
+ranged stacks and piles of clean linen. She had been on early duty since
+six o'clock.
+
+The pupil-teacher in attendance stepped obediently into the passage; and
+Laura returned.
+
+"Doors are made to be shut, Laura Rambotham, I'd have you remember
+that!" fumed Miss Day in the same indistinct voice: she was in the grip
+of a heavy cold, which had not been improved by the draughts of the
+hall.
+
+"I'm sorry, Miss Day. I thought I had. I was a little late."
+
+"That's your own lookout," barked the governess.--"Oh, there you are at
+last, Miss Snodgrass. I'd begun to think you weren't going to appear at
+all this morning. It's close on a quarter past seven."
+
+"Sorry," said Miss Snodgrass laconically. "My watch must be losing.--
+Well, I suppose I can begin by marking Laura Rambotham down late.--What
+on earth are you standing there holding the door for?"
+
+"Miss Day knows--I don't," sauced Laura, and made her escape.
+
+She did not let Miss Snodgrass's bad mark disturb her. No sooner had she
+begun her practising than she fell to work again on the theme that
+occupied all her leisure moments, and was threatening to assume the bulk
+of an early Victorian novel. But she now built at her top-heavy edifice
+for her own enjoyment; and the usual fate of the robust liar had
+overtaken her: she was beginning to believe in her own lies. Still she
+never ventured to relax her critical alertness, her careful surveillance
+of detail. For, just a day or two before, she had seen a quick flare-up
+of incredulity light Tilly's face, and oddly enough this had happened
+when she tried her audience with a fact, a simple little fact, an
+incident that had really occurred. She had killed the doubt, instantly,
+by smothering it with a fiction; but she could not forget that it had
+existed. It has very perplexing; for otherwise her hearers did not shy
+at a mortal thing; she could drive them where and how she chose.
+
+At the present moment she was planning a great coup: nothing more or
+less than a frustrated attempt on her virtue. It was almost
+ready to be submitted to them--for she had read PAMELA with heartfelt
+interest during the holidays--and only a few connecting links were
+missing, with which to complete her own case.
+
+Then, without the slightest warning, the blow fell.
+
+It was a Sunday afternoon; the half-hour that preceded Sunday school.
+Laura, in company with several others, was in the garden, getting her
+Bible chapter by heart, when Maria called her.
+
+"Laura! Come here. I want to tell you something."
+
+Laura approached, her lips in busy motion. "What's up?"
+
+"I say, chicken, your nose is going to be put out of joint."
+
+"Mine? What do you mean?" queried Laura, and had a faint sense of
+impending disaster.
+
+"What I say. M. Pidwall's asked to the you-know-who's next Saturday."
+
+"No, she's not!" cried Laura vehemently, and clapped her Bible to.
+
+"S'help me God, she is," asserted Maria.--"Look out, don't set the place
+on fire."
+
+"How do you know? . . . who told you?"
+
+"M. P. herself--Gosh, but you are a jealous little cub. Oh, go on,
+Kiddy, don't take it like that. I guess he won't give you away."--For
+Laura was as pale as a moment before she had been scarlet.
+
+Alleging a violent headache, she mounted to her room, and sat down on
+her bed. She felt stunned, and it took her some time to recover her
+wits. Sitting on the extreme edge of the bedstead, she stared at [P.181]
+the objects in the room without seeing them. "M. P.'s going there on
+Saturday . . . M. P.'s going there on Saturday," she repeated stupidly,
+and, with her hands pressed on her hips, rocked herself to and fro,
+after the fashion of an older woman in pain.
+
+The fact was too appalling to be faced; her mind postponed it. Instead,
+she saw the fifty-five at Sunday school--where they were at this minute
+--drawn up in a line round the walls of the dining-hall. She saw them
+rise to wail out the hymn; saw Mr. Strachey on his chair in the middle
+of the floor, perpetually nimming with his left leg. And, as she
+pictured the familiar scene to herself, she shivered with a sudden sense
+of isolation: behind each well-known face lurked a possible enemy.
+
+If it had only not been M. P.!--that was the first thought that
+crystallised. Anyone else! . . . from any of the rest she might have
+hoped for some mercy. But Mary Pidwall was one of those people--there
+were plenty such--before whom a nature like Laura's was inclined, at
+the best of times, to shrink away, keenly aware of its own paltriness
+and ineffectualness. Mary was rectitude in person: and it cannot be
+denied that, to Laura, this was synonymous with hard, narrow,
+ungracious. Not quite a prig, though: there was fun in Mary, and life in
+her; but it was neither fun nor vivacity of a kind that Laura could feel
+at ease with. Such capers as the elder girl cut were only skin-deep;
+they were on the surface of her character, had no real roots in her:
+just as the pieces of music she played on the piano were accidents of
+the moment, without deeper significance. To Mary, life was already
+serious, full of duties. She knew just what she wanted, too,
+where she wanted to go and how to get there; her plans were cut and
+dried. She was clever, very industrious, the head of several of her
+classes. Nor was she ever in conflict with the authorities: she moved
+among the rules of the school as safely as an egg-dancer among his eggs.
+For the simple reasons that temptations seemed to pass her by. There
+was, besides, a kind of manly exactness in her habit of thinking and
+speaking; and it was this trait her companions tried to symbolise, in
+calling her by the initial letters of her name.
+
+She and Laura, though classmates, had never drawn together. It is true,
+Mary was sixteen, and, at that time of life, a couple of years dig a
+wide breach. But there was also another reason. Once, in the innocence
+of her heart, Laura had let the cat out of the bag that an uncle of hers
+lived in the up-country township to which Mary belonged.
+
+The girl had eyed her coldly, incredulously. "What? That dreadful man
+your uncle?" she had exclaimed: she herself was the daughter of a church
+dignitary. "I should say I did know him--by reputation at least. And
+it's quite enough, thank you."
+
+Now Laura had understood that Uncle Tom--he needed but a pair of gold
+earrings to pose as the model for a Spanish Grandee--that Uncle Tom WAS
+odd, in this way: he sometimes took more to drink than was good for him;
+but she had never suspected him of being "dreadful", or a byword in
+Wantabadgery. Colouring to the roots of her hair, she murmured something
+about him of course not being recognised by the rest of the family; but
+M. P., she was sure, had never looked on her with the same eyes again.
+
+Such was the rigid young moralist into whose hands her fate was
+given.
+
+She sat and meditated these things, in spiritless fashion. She would
+have to confess to her fabrications--that was plain. M. P.'s precise
+mind would bring back a precise account of how matters stood in the
+Shepherd household: not by an iota would the truth be swerved from. Why,
+oh why, had she not foreseen this possibility? What evil spirit had
+prompted her and led her on?--But, before her brain could contemplate
+the awful necessity of rising and branding herself as a liar, it sought
+desperately for a means of escape. For a wink, she even nursed the idea
+of dragging in a sham man, under the pretence that Mr. Shepherd had been
+but a blind, used by her to screen some one else. But this yarn, twist
+it as she might, would not pass muster. Against it was the mass of her
+accumulated detail.
+
+She sat there, devising scheme after scheme. Not one of them would do.
+
+When, at tea-time, she rose to wash her face before going downstairs,
+the sole point on which she had come to clearness was, that just seven
+days lay between her and detection.--Yet after all, she reminded
+herself, seven days made a week, and a week was a good long time.
+Perhaps something would happen between now and Saturday. M. P. might
+have an accident and break her leg, and not be able to go. Or thin,
+poorly-fed Mr. Shepherd fall ill from overwork.--Oh, how she would
+rejoice to hear of it!
+
+And, if the worst came to the worst and she HAD to tell, at least it
+should not be to-day. To-day was Sunday; and people's thoughts were
+frightfully at liberty. To-morrow they would be engaged again;
+and, by to-morrow, she herself would have grown more accustomed to the
+idea.--Besides, how foolish to have been in too great a hurry, should
+something come to pass that rendered confession needless.
+
+On waking next morning, however, and accounting, with a throb, for the
+leaden weight on her mind, she felt braver, and quite determined to make
+a clean breast of her misdoings. Things could not go on like this. But
+no sooner was she plunged into the routine of the day than her decision
+slackened: it was impossible to find just the right moment to begin.
+Early in the morning everyone was busy looking over lessons, and would
+not thank you for the upset, the dinner-hour was all too short; after
+school, on the walk, she had a partner who knew nothing about the
+affair, and after tea she practised.--Hence, on Monday her purpose
+failed her.
+
+On Tuesday it was the same; the right moment never presented itself.
+
+In bed that night she multiplied the remaining days into hours. They
+made one hundred and twenty. That heartened her a little; considered
+thus, the time seemed very much longer; and so she let Wednesday slip
+by, without over-much worry.
+
+On Thursday she not only failed to own up, but indulged anew.
+
+All the week, as if Mary Pidwall's coming visit worked upon them, the
+girls had been very greedy for more love-story, and had shown themselves
+decidedly nettled by Laura's refusal to continue; for this was the week
+when the great revelation she had hinted at should have been made. And
+one afternoon when the four were twitting her, and things were
+looking very black, Laura was incited by some devil to throw them, not,
+it is true, the savoury incident their mouths watered for, but a fresh
+fiction--just as the beset traveller throws whatever he has at hand, to
+the ravenous wolves that press round the sledge. At the moment, the
+excitement that accompanies inspiration kept her up; but afterwards she
+had a stinging fit of remorse; and her self-reproaches were every whit
+as bitter as those of the man who has again broken the moral law he has
+vowed to respect, and who now sees that he is powerless against
+recurring temptation.
+
+When she remembered those four rapacious faces, Laura realised that,
+come what might, she would never have the courage to confess. To them,
+at least. That night in deep humility she laid her sin bare to God,
+imploring Him, even though He could not pardon it, to avert the
+consequences from her.
+
+The last days were also darkened by her belief that M. P. had got wind
+of her romancings: as, indeed, was quite likely; for the girls' tongues
+were none too safe. Mary looked at her from time to time with such a
+sternly suspicious eye that Laura's very stomach quailed within her.
+
+And meanwhile the generous hours had declined to less than half.
+
+"Twice more to get up, and twice to go to bed," she reckoned aloud to
+herself on Saturday morning.
+
+She was spending that week-end at Godmother's. It was as dull as usual;
+she had ample leisure to brood over what lay before her. It was now a
+certainty, fixed, immovable; for, by leaving school that day without
+having spoken, she had burned her ships behind her. When she
+went back on Monday M. P. would be there, and every loophole closed. On
+Sunday evening she made an excuse and went down into the garden. There
+was no moon; but, overhead, the indigo-blue was a prodigal glitter of
+stars--myriads of silver eyes that perforated the sky. They sparkled
+with a cold disregard of the small girl standing under the mulberry
+tree; but Laura, too, was only half-alive to their magnificence. Her
+thoughts ran on suicide, on making an end of her blighted career. God
+was evidently not going to be generous or long-suffering enough to come
+to her aid; and in imagination she saw the fifty-five gaining on her
+like a pack of howling hyaenas; saw Mrs. Gurley, Mr. Strachey--Mother.
+Detection and exposure, she knew it now, were the most awful things the
+world held. But she had nothing handy: neither a rope, nor poison, nor
+was there a dam in the neighbourhood.
+
+That night she had the familiar dream that she was being "stood up" and
+expelled, as Annie Johns had been: thousands of tongues shouted her
+guilt; she was hunted like a wallaby. She wakened with a scream, and
+Marina, her bedfellow, rose on one elbow and lighted the candle.
+Crumpled and dishevelled, Laura lay outside the sheet that should have
+covered her; and her pillow had slipped to the floor.
+
+"What on earth's the matter? Dreaming? Then depend on it you've eaten
+something that's disagreed with you."
+
+How she dragged her legs back to school that morning, Laura never knew.
+At the sight of the great stone building her inner disturbance was such
+that she was nearly sick. Even the unobservant Marina was forced
+to a remark.
+
+"You do look a bit peaky. I'm sure your stomach's out of order. Your
+should take a dose of castor-oil to-night, before you go to bed."
+
+Though it was a blazing November day, her fingers were cold as she took
+off her hat and changed her white frock. "For the last time," she
+murmured; by which she meant the last time in untarnished honour. And
+she folded and hung up her clothes, with a neatness that was foreign to
+her.
+
+Classes were in full swing when she went downstairs; nothing could
+happen now till the close of morning school. But Laura signalised the
+beginning of her downfall, the end of her comet-like flight, by losing
+her place in one form after another, the lessons she had prepared on
+Friday evening having gone clean out of her head.
+
+Directly half-past twelve struck, she ran to the top of the garden and
+hid herself under a tree. There she crouched, her fingers in her ears,
+her heart thumping as if it would break. Till the dinner-bell rang. Then
+she was forced to emerge--and no tottering criminal, about to face the
+scaffold, has ever had more need of Dutch courage than Laura in this
+moment. Peeping round the corner of the path she saw the fateful group:
+M. P. the centre of four gesticulating figures. She loitered till they
+had scattered and disappeared; then with shaking legs crept to the
+house. At the long tables the girls still stood, waiting for Mr.
+Strachey; and the instant Laura set foot in the hall, five pairs of eyes
+caught her, held her, pinned her down, as one pins a butterfly to a
+board. She was much too far gone to think of tossing her head and
+braving things out, now that the crisis had come. Pale, guilty,
+wretched, she sidled to her seat. This was near Maria's, and, as she
+passed, Maria leant back.
+
+"You VILE little liar!" 
+
+"How's that shy little mouse of a girl we had here a month or two ago?"
+Mr. Shepherd had inquired. "Let me see--what was her name again?"
+
+To which Miss Isabella had replied: "Well, you know, Robby dear, you
+really hardly saw her. You had so much to do, poor boy, just when she
+was here. Her name was Laura--Laura Rambotham."
+
+And Mrs. Shepherd gently: "Yes, a nice little girl. But very young for
+her age. And SO shy."
+
+"You wretched little lying sneak!"
+
+In vain Laura wept and protested.
+
+"You made me do it. I should never have told a word, if it hadn't been
+for you."
+
+This point of view enraged them. "What? You want to put it on us now, do
+you? . . . you dirty little skunk! To say WE made you tell that pack of
+lies?--Look here: as long as you stay in this blooming shop, I'll never
+open my mouth to you again!"
+
+"Someone ought to tell old Gurley and have her expelled. That's all
+she's fit for. Spreading disgusting stories about people who've been
+kind to her. They probably only asked her there out of charity. She's as
+poor as dirt."
+
+"Wants her bottom smacked--that's what I say!"
+
+Thus Maria, and, with her, Kate Horner.
+
+Tilly was cooler and bitterer. "I was a dashed fool ever to believe a
+word. I might have known her little game. She? Why, when I took
+her out to see my cousin Bob, she couldn't say bo to a goose. He laughed
+about her afterwards like anything; said she ought to have come in a
+perambulator, with a nurse.--YOU make anyone in love with you--you!"
+And Tilly spat, to show her disdain.
+
+"What have they been saying to you, Laura?" whispered Chinky, pale and
+frightened. "Whatever is the matter?"
+
+"Mind your own business and go away," sobbed Laura.
+
+"I am, I'm going," said Chinky humbly.--"Oh, Laura, I WISH you had that
+ring."
+
+"Oh, blow you and your ring! I hate the very name of it," cried Laura,
+maddened.--And retreating to a lavatory, which was the only private
+place in the school, she wept her full.
+
+They all, every girl of them, understood white lies, and practised them.
+They might also have forgiven her a lie of the good, plain,
+straightforward, thumping order. What they could not forgive, or get
+over, was the extraordinary circumstantiality of the fictions which with
+she had gulled them: to be able to invent lies with such proficiency
+meant that you had been born with a criminal bent.--And as a criminal
+she was accordingly treated.
+
+Even the grown-up girls heard a garbled version of the story.
+
+"Whyever did you do it?" one of them asked Laura curiously; it was a
+very pretty girl, called Evelyn, with twinkling brown eyes.
+
+"I don't know," said Laura abjectly; and this was almost true.
+
+"But I say! . . . nasty tarradiddles about people who'd been so
+nice to you? What made you tell them?"
+
+"I don't KNOW. They just came."
+
+The girl's eyes smiled. "Well, I never! Poor little Kiddy," she said as
+she turned away.
+
+But this was the only kind word Laura heard. For many and many a night
+after, she cried herself to sleep. 
+
+
+
+
+XIX.
+
+
+
+Thus Laura went to Coventry.--Not that the social banishment she now
+suffered was known by that name. To the majority of the girls Coventry
+was just a word in the geography book, a place where ribbons were said
+to be made, and where for a better-read few, some one had hung with
+grooms and porters on a bridge; this detail, odd to say, making a deeper
+impression on their young minds than the story of Lady Godiva, which was
+looked upon merely as a naughty anecdote.
+
+But, by whatever name it was known, Laura's ostracism was complete. She
+had been sampled, tested, put on one side. And not the softest-hearted
+could find an excuse for her behaviour.
+
+It was but another instance of how misfortune dogs him who is down, that
+Chinky should choose this very moment to bring further shame upon her.
+
+On one of the miserable days that were now the rule, when Laura would
+have liked best to be a rabbit, hid deep in its burrow; as she was going
+upstairs one afternoon, she met Jacob, the man-of-all-work, coming down.
+He had a trunk on his shoulder. Throughout the day she had been aware of
+a subdued excitement among the boarders; they had stood about in groups,
+talking in low voices--talking about her, she believed, from the
+glances that were thrown over shoulders at her as she passed. She made
+herself as small as she could; but when tea-time came, and then [P.192]
+supper, and Chinky had not appeared at either meal, curiosity got the
+better of her, and she tried to pump one of the younger girls.
+
+Maria came up while she was speaking, and the child ran away; for the
+little ones aped their elders in making Laura taboo.
+
+"What, liar? You want to stuff us you don't know why she's gone?" said
+Maria. "No, thank you, it's not good enough. You can't bamboozle us this
+time."
+
+"Sapphira up to her tricks again, is she?" threw in the inseparable
+Kate, who had caught the last words. "No, by dad, we don't tell liars
+what they know already.--So put that in your pipe and smoke it!"
+
+Only bit by bit did Laura dig out their meaning: then, the horrible
+truth lay bare. Chinky had been dismissed--privately because she was a
+boarder--from the school. Her crime was: she had taken half-a-sovereign
+from the purse of one of her room-mates. When taxed with the theft, she
+wept that she had not taken it for herself, but to buy a ring for Laura
+Rambotham; and, with this admission on her lips, she passed out of their
+lives, leaving Laura, her confederate, behind.--Yes, confederate; for,
+in the minds of most, liar and thief were synonymous.
+
+Laura had not cared two straws for Chinky; she found what the latter had
+done, "mean and disgusting", and said so, stormily; but of course was not
+believed. Usually too proud to defend herself, she here returned to the
+charge again and again; for the hint of connivance had touched her on
+the raw. But she strove in vain to prove her innocence: she could not
+get her enemies to grasp the abysmal difference between merely
+making up a story about people, and laying hands on others' property; if
+she could do the one, she was capable of the other; and her companions
+remained convinced that, if she had not actually had her fingers in some
+one's purse, she had, by a love of jewellery, incited Chinky to the
+theft. And so, after a time, Laura gave up the attempt and suffered in
+silence; and it WAS suffering; for her schoolfellows were cruel with
+that intolerance, that unimaginative dullness, which makes a woman's
+cruelty so hard to bear. Laura had to accustom herself to hear every
+word she said doubted; to hear some one called to, before her face, to
+attest her statements; to see her room-mates lock up their purses under
+her very nose.
+
+However, only three weeks had still to run till the Christmas holidays.
+She drew twenty-one strokes on a sheet of paper, which she pinned to the
+wall above her bed; and each morning she ran her pencil through a fresh
+line. She was quite resolved to beg Mother not to send her back to
+school: if she said she was not getting proper food, that would be
+enough to put Mother up in arms.
+
+The boxes were being fetched from the lumber-rooms and distributed among
+their owners, when a letter arrived from Mother saying that the two
+little boys had sandy blight, and that Laura would not be able to come
+home under two or three weeks, for fear of infection. These weeks she
+was to spend, in company with Pin, at a watering-place down the Bay,
+where one of her aunts had a cottage.
+
+The news was welcome to Laura: she had shrunk from the thought of
+Mother's searching eye. And at the cottage there would be none
+of her grown-up relatives to face; only an old housekeeper, who was
+looking after a party of boys.
+
+Hence, when speech day was over, instead of setting out on an up-country
+railway journey, Laura, under the escort of Miss Snodgrass, went on
+board one of the steamers that ploughed the Bay.
+
+"I should say sea-air'll do you good--brighten you up a bit," said the
+governess affably as they drove: she was in great good-humour at the
+prospect of losing sight for a time of the fifty-five. "You seem to be
+always in the dumps nowadays."
+
+Laura dutifully waved her handkerchief from the deck of the SILVER STAR;
+and the paddles began to churn. As Miss Snodgrass's back retreated down
+the pier, and the breach between ship and land widened, she settled
+herself on her seat with a feeling of immense relief. At last--at last
+she was off. The morning had been a sore trial to her: in all the noisy
+and effusive leave-taking, she was odd man out; no one had been sorry to
+part from her; no one had extracted a promise that she would write. Her
+sole valediction had been a minatory shaft from Maria: if she valued her
+skin, to learn to stop telling crams before she showed up there again.
+Now, she was free of them; she would not be humiliated afresh, would not
+need to stand eye to eye with anyone who knew of her disgrace, for weeks
+to come; perhaps never again, if Mother agreed. Her heart grew
+momentarily lighter. And the farther they left Melbourne behind them,
+the higher her spirits rose.
+
+But then, too, was it possible, on this radiant December day, long to
+remain in what Miss Snodgrass had called "the dumps"?--The sea
+was a blue-green mirror, on the surface of which they swam. The sky was
+a stretched sheet of blue, in which the sun hung a very ball of fire.
+But the steamer cooled the air as it moved; and none of the white-clad
+people who, under the stretched white awnings, thronged the deck, felt
+oppressed by the great heat. In the middle of the deck, a brass band
+played popular tunes.
+
+At a pretty watering-place where they stopped, Laura rose and crossed to
+the opposite railing. A number of passengers went ashore, pushing and
+laughing, but almost as many more came on board, all dressed in white,
+and with eager, animated faces. Then the boat stood to sea again and
+sailed past high, grass-grown cliffs, from which a few old cannons,
+pointing their noses at you, watched over the safety of the Bay--in the
+event, say, of the Japanese or the Russians entering the Heads past the
+pretty township, and the beflagged bathing-enclosures on the beach
+below. They neared the tall, granite lighthouse at the point, with the
+flagstaff at its side where incoming steamers were signalled; and as
+soon as they had rounded this corner they were in view of the Heads
+themselves. From the distant cliffs there ran out, on either side, brown
+reefs, which made the inrushing water dance and foam, and the entrance
+to the Bay narrow and dangerous: on one side, there projected the
+portion of a wreck which had lain there as long as Laura had been in the
+world. Then, having made a sharp turn to the left, the boat crossed to
+the opposite coast, and steamed past barrack-like buildings lying asleep
+in the fierce sunshine of the afternoon; and, in due course, it stopped
+at Laura's destination.
+
+Old Anne was waiting on the jetty, having hitched the horse to a
+post: she had driven in, in the 'shandrydan', to meet Laura. For the
+cottage was not on the front beach, with the hotels and boarding-houses,
+the fenced-in baths and great gentle slope of yellow sand: it stood in
+the bush, on the back beach, which gave to the open sea.
+
+Laura took her seat beside the old woman in her linen sunbonnet, the
+body of the vehicle being packed full of groceries and other stores; and
+the drive began. Directly they were clear of the township the road as
+good as ceased, became a mere sandy track, running through a scrub of
+ti-trees.--And what sand! White, dry, sliding sand, through which the
+horse shuffled and floundered, in which the wheels sank and stuck. Had
+one of the many hillocks to be taken, the two on the box-seat
+instinctively threw their weight forward; old Anne, who had a stripped
+wattle-bough for a whip, urged and cajoled; and more than once she
+handed Laura the reins and got down, to give the horse a pull. They had
+always to be ducking their heads, too, to let the low ti-tree branches
+sweep over their backs.
+
+About a couple of miles out, the old woman alighted and slipped a rail;
+and having passed the only other house within cooee, they drove through
+a paddock, but at a walking-pace, because of the thousands of
+rabbit-burrows that perforated the ground. Another slip-rail lowered,
+they drew up at the foot of a steepish hill, beside a sandy little
+vegetable garden, a shed and a pump. The house was perched on the top of
+the hill, and directly they sighted it they also saw Pin flying down,
+her sunbonnet on her neck.
+
+"Laura, Laura! Oh, I AM glad you've come. What a time you've
+been!"
+
+"Hullo, Pin.--Oh, I say, let me get out first."
+
+"And pull up your bonnet, honey. D'you want to be after gettin'
+sunstruck?"
+
+Glad though Laura was to see her sister again, she did not manage to
+infuse a very hearty tone into her greeting; for her first glimpse of
+Pin had given her a disagreeable shock. It was astonishing, the change
+the past half-year had worked in the child; and as the two climbed the
+hill together, to the accompaniment of Pin's bubbly talk, Laura stole
+look after look at her little sister, in the hope of growing used to
+what she saw. Pin had never been pretty, but now she was "downright
+hideous"--as Laura phrased it to herself. Eleven years of age, she had
+at last begun to grow in earnest: her legs were as of old mere
+spindleshanks, but nearly twice as long; and her fat little body,
+perched above them, made one think of a shrivelled-up old man who has
+run all to paunch. Her face, too, had increased in shapelessness, the
+features being blurred in the fat mass; her blue eyes were more
+slit-like than before; and, to cap everything, her fine skin had
+absolutely no chance, so bespattered was it with freckles. And none of
+your pretty little sun-kisses; but large, black, irregular freckles that
+disfigured like moles. Laura felt quite distressed; it outraged her
+feelings that anyone belonging to her should be so ugly; and as Pin, in
+happy ignorance of her sister's reflections, chattered on, Laura turned
+over in her mind what she ought to do. She would have to tell Pin about
+herself--that was plain: she must break the news to her, in case
+others should do it, and more cruelly. It was one consolation to
+know that Pin was not sensitive about her looks; so long as you did not
+tease her about her legs, there was no limit to what you might say to
+her: the grieving was all for the onlooker. But not today: this was the
+first day; and there were pleasanter things to think of. And so, when
+they had had tea--with condensed milk in it, for the cow had gone dry,
+and no milkman came out so far--when tea was over--and that was all
+that could be undertaken in the way of refreshment after the journey;
+washing your face and hands, for instance, was out of the question;
+every drop of water had to be carried up the hill from the pump, and old
+Anne purposely kept the ewers empty by day; if you WOULD wash, you must
+wash in the sea--as soon, then, as tea was over, the two sisters made
+for the beach.
+
+The four-roomed, weatherboard cottage, to which at a later date a
+lean-to had been added, faced the bush: from the verandah there was a
+wide view of the surrounding country. Between the back of the house and
+the beach rose a huge sand-hill, sparsely grown with rushes and coarse
+grass. It took you some twenty minutes to toil over this, and boots and
+stockings were useless impedimenta; for the sand was once more of that
+loose and shifting kind in which you sank at times up to the knees,
+falling back one step for every two you climbed. But then, sand was the
+prevailing note of this free and easy life: it bestrewed verandah and
+floors; you carried it in your clothes; the beds were full of it; it
+even got into the food; and you were soon so accustomed to its presence
+that you missed the grit of it under foot, or the prickling on
+your skin, did old Anne happen to take a broom in her hand, or
+thoroughly re-make the beds.--When, however, on your way to the beach
+you had laboriously attained the summit of the great dune, the sight
+that met you almost took your breath away: as far as the eye could
+reach, the bluest of skies melting into the bluest of seas, which broke
+its foam-flecked edge against the flat, brown reefs that fringed the
+shore. Then, downhill--with a trip and a flounder that sent the sand
+man-high--and at last you were on what Laura and Pin thought the most
+wonderful beach in the world. What a variety of things was there!
+Whitest, purest sand, hot to the touch as a zinc roof in summer; rocky
+caves, and sandy caves hung with crumbly stalactites; at low tide, on
+the reef, lakes and ponds and rivers deep enough to make it unnecessary
+for you to go near the ever-angry surf at all; seaweeds that ran through
+the gamut of colours: brown and green, pearl-pink and coral-pink, to
+vivid scarlet and orange; shells, beginning with tiny grannies and
+cowries, and ending with the monsters in which the breakers had left
+their echo; the bones of cuttlefish, light as paper, and shaped like
+javelins. And, what was best of all, this beach belonged to them alone;
+they had not to share its treasures with strangers; except the
+inhabitants of the cottage, never a soul set foot upon it.
+
+The chief business of the morning was to bathe. If the girls were alone
+and the tide full, they threw off their clothes and ran into a sandy,
+shallow pool, where the water never came above their waists, and where
+it was safe to let the breakers dash over them. But if the tide were
+low, the boys bathed, too, and then Pin and Laura tied
+themselves up in old bathing-gowns that were too big for them, and all
+went in a body to the "Half-Moon Hole". This pool, which was about twenty
+feet long and ten to fifteen deep, lay far out on the reef, and, at high
+tide, was hidden beneath surf and foam; at low water, on the other hand,
+it was like a glass mirror reflecting the sky, and so clear that you
+could see every weed that waved at the bottom. Having cast off your
+shoes, you applied your soles gingerly to the prickles of the rock; then
+plop!--and in you went. Pin often needed a shove from behind, for
+nowhere, of course, could you get a footing; but Laura swam with the
+best. Some of the boys would dive to the bottom and bring up weeds and
+shells, but Laura and Pin kept on the surface of the water; for they had
+the imaginative dread common to children who know the sea well--the
+dread of what may lurk beneath the thick, black horrors of seaweed.
+
+Then, after an hour or so in the water, home to dinner, hungry as
+swagmen, though the bill of fare never varied: it was always rabbit for
+dinner, crayfish for tea; for the butcher called only once a week, and
+meat could not be kept an hour without getting flyblown. The rabbits
+were skinned and in the stew-pot before they were cold; the crayfish
+died an instant death: one that drove the blood to Laura's head, and
+made Pin run away and cry, with her fingers to her ears; for she
+believed the sizzling of the water, as the fish were dropped in, to be
+the shriek of the creatures in their death-agony.
+
+Except in bathing, the girls saw little of the boys. Both were afraid of
+guns, so did not go out on the expeditions which supplied the
+dinner-table; and old Anne would not allow them to join the crayfishing
+excursions. For these took place by night, off the end of the reef, with
+nets and torches; and it sometimes happened, if the surf were heavy,
+that one of the fishers was washed off the rocks, and only hauled up
+again with considerable difficulty.
+
+Laura took her last peep at the outside world, every evening, in the
+brief span of time between sunset and dark. Running up to the top of one
+of the hills, and letting her eyes range over sky and sea, she would
+drink in the scents that were waking to life after the burning heat of
+the day: salt water, warmed sand and seaweeds, ti-scrub, sour-grass, and
+the sturdy berry-bushes, high as her knee, through which she had
+ploughed her way. That was one of the moments she liked best, that, and
+lying in bed at night listening to the roar of the surf, which went on
+and on like a cannonade, even though the hill lay between. It made her
+flesh crawl, too, in delightful fashion, did she picture to herself how
+alone she and Pin were, in their room: the boys slept in the lean-to on
+the other side of the kitchen; old Anne at the back. For miles round, no
+house broke the solitude of the bush; only a thin wooden partition
+separated her from possible bushrangers, from the vastness and
+desolation of the night, the eternal booming of the sea.
+
+Such was the life into which Laura now threw herself heart and soul,
+forgetting, in the sheer joy of living, her recent tribulation.
+
+But even the purest pleasures WILL pall; and after a time, when the
+bloom had worn off and the newness and her mind was more at leisure
+again, she made some disagreeable discoveries which ruffled her
+tranquillity.
+
+It was Pin, poor, fat, little well-meaning Pin, who did the mischief
+
+Pin was not only changed in looks; her character had changed, too; and
+in so marked a way that before a week was out the sisters were at
+loggerheads. Each day made it plainer to Laura that Pin was developing a
+sturdy independence; she had ceased to look up to Laura as a prodigy of
+wisdom, and had begun to hold opinions of her own. She was, indeed, even
+disposed to be critical of her sister; and criticism from this quarter
+was more than Laura could brook: it was just as if a slave usurped his
+master's rights. At first speechless with surprise, she ended by losing
+her temper; the more, because Pin was prone to be mulish, and could not
+be got to budge, either by derision or by scorn, from her espoused
+views. They were those of the school at which for the past half-year she
+had been a day-pupil, and seemed to her unassailable. Laura found them
+ridiculous, as she did much else about Pin at this time: her ugliness,
+her setting herself up as an authority: and she jeered unkindly whenever
+Pin came out with them.--A still more ludicrous thing was that, despite
+her plainness, Pin actually had an admirer. True, she did not say so
+outright; perhaps she was not even aware of it; but Laura gathered from
+her talk that a boy at her school, a boy some three years older than
+herself, had given her a silk handkerchief and liked to help her with
+her sums.--And to Laura this was the most knockdown blow of all.
+
+One day it came to an open quarrel between them.
+
+They were lying on the beach after bathing, trying to protect
+their bare and blistered legs from the sandflies. Laura, flat on her
+back, had spread a towel over hers; Pin sat Turk--fashion with her legs
+beneath her and fought the flies with her hands. Having vainly
+endeavoured to draw from the reticent Laura some of those school-tales
+of which, in former holidays, she had been so prodigal, Pin was now
+chattering to her heart's content, about the small doings of home. Laura
+listened to her with the impatient toleration of one who has seen the
+world: she really could not be expected to interest herself in such
+trifles; and she laughed in her sleeve at Pin's simpleness. When,
+however, her little sister began to enlarge anew on some wonderful
+orders Mother had lately had, she could not refrain from saying
+crossly: "You've told me that a dozen times already. And you needn't bawl
+it out for everyone to hear."
+
+"Oh, Laura! there isn't anyone anywhere near us . . . and even if there
+were--why, I thought you'd be so pleased. Mother's going to give you an
+extra shilling pocket-money, 'cause of it."
+
+"Of course I'm pleased. Don't be so silly, Pin."
+
+"I'm not ALWAYS silly, Laura," protested Pin. "And I don't believe you
+ARE glad, a bit. Old Anne was, though. She said: 'Bless her dear
+heart!'"
+
+"Old Anne? Well, I just wonder what next! It's none of her dashed
+business."
+
+"Oh, Laura!" began Pin, growing tearful both at words and tone. "Why,
+Laura, you're not ashamed of it, are you?--that mother does sewing?"--
+and Pin opened her lobelia-blue eyes to their widest, showing what very
+big eyes they would be, were they not so often swollen with
+crying.
+
+"Of course not," said Laura tartly. "But I'm blessed if I can see what
+it's got to do with old Anne."
+
+"But she asked me . . . what mother was working at--and if she'd got
+any new customers. She just loves mother."
+
+"Like her cheek!" snapped Laura. "Poking her ugly old nose into what
+doesn't concern her. You should just have said you didn't know."
+
+"But that would have been a story, Laura!" cried Pin, horrified "I did
+know--quite well."
+
+"Goodness gracious, Pin, you----"
+
+"I've never told a story in my life," said Pin hotly. "And I'm not going
+to either, for you or anyone. I think you ought to be ashamed of
+yourself."
+
+"Hold your silly tongue!"
+
+"I shan't, Laura. And I think you're very wicked. You're not a bit like
+what you used to be. And it's all going to school that's done it--
+Mother says it is."
+
+"Oh, don't be such a blooming ass!" and Laura, stung to the quick,
+retaliated by taunting Pin with the change that had come to pass in her
+appearance. To her surprise, she found Pin grown inordinately touchy
+about her looks: at Laura's brutal statement of the truth she cried
+bitterly.
+
+"I'm not, no, I'm not! I haven't got a full moon for a face! It's no
+fatter than yours. Sarah said last time you were home how fat you were
+getting."
+
+"I'm sure I'm not," said Laura, indignant in her turn.
+
+"Yes, you are," sobbed Pin. "But you only think other people are ugly,
+not yourself I'll tell mother what you've said as soon as ever I
+get home. And I'll tell her, too, you want to make me tell stories. And
+that I'm sure you've done something naughty at school, 'cause you won't
+ever talk about it. And how you're always saying bad words like blooming
+and gosh and golly--yes, I will!"
+
+"You were always a sneak and a tell-tale."
+
+"And you were always a greedy, selfish, deceitful thing."
+
+"You don't know anything about me, you numbskull, you!"
+
+"I don't want to! I know you're a bad, wicked girl."
+
+After this exchange of home truths, they did not speak to each other for
+two days: Pin had a temper that smouldered, and could not easily
+forgive. So she stayed at old Anne's side, helping to bake scones and
+leatherjackets; or trotted after the boys, who had dropped into the way
+of saying: "Come on, little Pin!" as they never said: "Come on, Laura!"
+and Laura retired in lonely dudgeon to the beach.
+
+She took the estrangement so much to heart that she eased her feelings
+by abusing Pin in thought; Pin was a pig-headed little ignoramus, as
+timid as ever of setting one foot before the other. And the rest of them
+would be just the same--old stick-in-the muds, unchanged by a hair, or,
+if they HAD changed, then changed for the worse. Laura had somehow never
+foreseen the day on which she would find herself out of tune with her
+home circle; with unthinking assurance she had expected that Pin, for
+instance, would always be eager to keep pace with her. Now, she saw that
+her little sister would probably never catch up to her again.
+Such progress as Pin might make--if she were not already glued firm to
+her silly notions--would be in quite another direction. For the quarrel
+had made one thing plain to Laura: with regard to her troubles, she need
+not look to Pin for sympathy: if Pin talked such gibberish at the hint
+of putting off an inquisitive old woman, what would she--and not she
+alone--what would they all say to the tissue of lies Laura had spun
+round Mr. Shepherd, a holy man, a clergyman, and a personal friend of
+Mother's into the bargain? She could not blink the fact that, did it
+come to their ears, they would call her in earnest, what Pin had called
+her in her temper--bad and wicked. Home was, alas! no longer the snug
+nest in which she was safe from the slings and shanghais of the world.
+
+And then there was another thing: did she stay at home, she would have
+to re-live herself into the thousand and one gimcrack concerns, which
+now, as set forth by Pin, so bored her: the colic Leppie had brought on
+by eating unripe fruit; the fact that another of Sarah's teeth had
+dropped out without extraneous aid. It was all very well for a week or
+two, but, at the idea of shutting herself wholly up with such mopokes,
+of cutting herself off from her present vital interests, Laura hastily
+reconsidered her decision to leave school. No: badly as she had suffered
+at her companions' hands, much as she dreaded returning, it was at
+school she belonged. All her heart was there: in the doings of her
+equals, the things that really mattered--who would be promoted, who
+prefect, whose seat changed in the dining-hall.--Besides, could one who
+had experienced the iron rule of Mr. Strachey, or Mrs. Gurley,
+ever be content to go back and just form one of a family of children?
+She not, at any rate!
+
+Thus she lay, all day long, her hands clasped under her neck, a small
+white speck on the great wave-lapped beach. She watched the surf break,
+watched the waves creep up and hide the reef, watched the gulls vanish
+in the sun-saturated blue overhead. Sometimes she rose to her elbow to
+follow a ship just inside the horizon; and it pleased her to think that
+this great boat was sailing off, with a load of lucky mortals, to some
+unknown, fairer world, while she, a poor Cinderella, had to stop behind
+--even though she knew it was only the English mail going on to Sydney.
+Of Pin she preferred not to think; nor could she dwell with equanimity
+on her late misfortunes at school and the trials that awaited her on her
+reappearance; and since she HAD to think of something, she fell into the
+habit of making up might-have-been, of narrating to herself how things
+would have fallen out had her fictions been fact, her ascetic hero the
+impetuous lover she had made of him.--In other words, lying prostrate
+on the sand, Laura went on with her story.
+
+When, towards the end of the third week, she and Pin were summoned to
+spend some days with Godmother, she had acquired such a gusto for this
+occupation, that she preferred to shirk reality, and let Pin pay the
+visit alone. 
+
+
+
+
+XX.
+
+
+
+WIE SOLLTE EIN STROM NICHT ENDLICH DEN WEG ZUM MEERE FINDEN!
+
+NIETZSCHE
+
+
+Sea, sun and air did their healing work, as did also the long, idle days
+in the home garden; and Laura drank in health and vigour with every
+breath.
+
+She had need of it all when, the golden holidays over, she returned to
+school; for the half-year that broke was, in many ways, the most trying
+she had yet had to face. True, her dupes' first virulence had waned--
+they no longer lashed her openly with their tongues--but the quiet,
+covert insults, that were now the rule, were every bit as hard to bear;
+and before a week had passed Laura was telling herself that, had she
+been a Christian Martyr, she would have preferred to be torn asunder
+with one jerk, rather than submit to the thumbkin. Not an eye but looked
+askance at her; on every face was painted a reminder of her moral
+inferiority; and even newcomers among the boarders soon learnt, without
+always knowing what her crime had been, that Laura Rambotham was "not the
+thing".
+
+This system of slight and disparagement was similar to what she had had
+to endure in her first school term; but its effect upon her was
+different. Then, in her raw timidity, she had bowed her head beneath it;
+now, she could not be so lamb-like. In thought, she never ceased to lay
+half the blame of what had happened on her companions' shoulders; and
+she was embittered by their injustice in making her alone
+responsible, when all she had done was to yield to their craving for
+romance. She became a rebel, wrapping herself round in the cloak of
+bitterness which the outcasts of fortune wear, feeding on her hate of
+those within the pale. Very well then, she said to herself: if her
+fellows chose to shut her out like this, she would stop outside, and
+never see eye to eye with them again. And it gave her an unholy pleasure
+to mock, in secret, at all they set store by.
+
+Her outward behaviour for many a day was, none the less, that of a
+footlicker; and by no sign did she indicate what she really was--a very
+unhappy girl. Like most rebels of her sex, she ardently desired to
+re-enter the fold of law and order; and it was to this end she worked,
+although, wherever she approached it, the place seemed to bristle with
+spears. But she did not let herself be daunted; she pocketed injuries,
+pretended not to hear them, played the spaniel to people she despised;
+and it soon became open talk, that no matter what you said to her, Laura
+Rambotham would not take offence. You could also rely on her to do a
+dirty job for you.--A horrid little toady was the verdict; especially
+of those who had no objection to be toadied to.
+
+Torn thus, between mutinous sentiments on the one hand, a longing for
+restitution on the other, Laura grew very sly--a regular little
+tactician. In these days, she was for ever considering what she ought to
+do, what to leave undone. She learnt to weigh her words before uttering
+them, instead of blurting out her thoughts in the childish fashion that
+had exposed her to ridicule; she learnt, too, at last, to keep her
+real opinions to herself, and to make those she expressed tally
+with her hearers'. And she was quick to discover that this was a
+short-cut towards regaining her lost place: to conceal what she truly
+felt--particularly if her feelings ran counter to those of the
+majority. For, the longer she was at school, the more insistently the
+truth was driven home to her, that the majority is always in the right.
+
+In the shifting of classes that took place at the year's end, she left
+the three chief witnesses of her disgrace--Tilly, Maria, Kate--behind
+her. She was again among a new set of girls. But this little piece of
+luck was outweighed by the fact that, shortly after Christmas, her room
+was changed for the one occupied by M. P., and M. P.'s best friend.
+
+So far, Laura had hardly dared to lift her eyes in Mary Pidwall's
+presence. For Mary knew not only the sum of her lies, but also held--or
+so Laura believed--that she came of a thoroughly degenerate family;
+thanks to Uncle Tom. And the early weeks spent at close quarters with
+her bore out these fears. The looks both M. P. and her friend bent on
+Laura said as plainly as words: if we are forced to tolerate this
+obnoxious little insect about us, we can at least show it just what a
+horrid little beast it is.--M. P. in particular was adamant,
+unrelenting; Laura quailed at the sound of her step.
+
+And yet she soon felt, rightly enough, it was just in the winning over
+of this stern, rigid nature that her hope of salvation lay. If she could
+once get M. P. on her side, all might yet be well again.
+
+So she began to lay siege to Mary's good-will--to Mary, who took none
+but the barest notice of her, even in the bedroom ignoring her
+as if she did not exist, and giving the necessary orders, for she was
+the eldest of the three, in tones of ice. But it needed a great wariness
+on Laura's part. And, in the beginning, she made a mistake. She was a
+toadeater here, too, seeking to curry favour with M. P. as with the
+rest, by fawning on her, in a way for which she could afterwards have
+hit herself. For it did not answer; M. P. had only a double disdain for
+the cringer, knowing nothing herself of the pitfalls that lie in wait
+for a temperament like Laura's. Mary's friendship was extended to none
+but those who had a lofty moral standard; and truthfulness and honesty
+were naturally the head virtues on her list. Laura was sharp enough to
+see that, if she wished to gain ground with M. P. she must make a
+radical change in her tactics. It was not enough, where Mary was in
+question, to play the echo. Did she, Laura, state an opinion, she must
+say what she meant, above all, mean what she said, and stick manfully to
+it, instead of, at the least hint, being ready to fly over to Mary's
+point of view: always though, of course, with the disquieting proviso in
+the background that her own opinions were such as she ought to have, and
+not heretical leanings that shocked and dismayed. In which case, there
+was nothing for it but to go on being mum.
+
+She ventured, moreover, little unobtrusive services, to which she
+thought neither of the girls could take exception; making their beds for
+them in the morning, and staying up last at night to put out the light.
+And once she overheard the friend, who was called Cupid, say: "You know,
+M. P., she's not such a bad little stick after all."--But then Cupid
+was easy-going, and inclined to be original.
+
+May answered: "She's no doubt beginning to see she can't lie to US. But
+she's a very double-faced child."
+
+It was also with an eye to M. P.'s approval that Laura threw herself,
+with renewed zeal, upon her work. And in those classes that called only
+for the exercise of her memory, she soon sat high. The reason why she
+could not mount still higher was that M. P. occupied the top place, and
+was not to be moved, even had Laura dreamed of attempting it.
+
+And at length, after three months of unremitting exertion in the course
+of which, because she had little peeps of what looked like success, the
+rebel in her went to sleep again--at length Laura had her reward. One
+Sunday morning M. P. asked her to be her partner on the walk to church.
+This was as if a great poet should bend from his throne to take a
+younger brother-singer by the hand; and, in her headlong fashion, Laura
+all but fell at the elder girl's feet. From this day forward she
+out-heroded Herod, in her efforts to make of herself exactly what Mary
+thought she ought to be.
+
+Deep within her, none the less, there lurked a feeling which sometimes
+made as if to raise its head: a feeling that she did not really like M.
+P., or admire her, or respect her; one which, had it come quite to life,
+would have kicked against Mary's authority, been contemptuous of her
+unimaginative way of seeing and saying things, on the alert to remind
+its owner that HER way, too, had a right to existence. But is was not
+strong enough to make itself heard, or rather Laura refused to hear it,
+and turned a deaf ear whenever it tried to hint at its presence.
+--For Mr. Worldly-Wiseman was her model just now.
+
+Whereas Cupid--there was something in Cupid that was congenial to her.
+A plain girl, with irregular features--how she had come by her nickname
+no one knew--Cupid was three years older than Laura, and one of the few
+in the school who loved reading for its own sake. In a manner, she was
+cleverer even than M. P.; but it was not a school-booky way, and hence
+was not thought much of. However, Laura felt drawn to her at once--even
+though Cupid treated her as quite a little girl--and they sometimes got
+as far as talking of books they had read. From this whiff of her, Laura
+was sure that Cupid would have had more understanding than M. P. for her
+want of veracity; for Cupid had a kind of a dare-devil mind in a
+hidebound character, and was often very bold of speech.
+
+Yet it was not Cupid's good opinion she worked for, with might and main.
+
+The rate of her upward progress in Mary's estimation could be gauged by
+the fact that the day came when the elder girl spoke openly to her of
+her crime. At the first merciless words Laura winced hotly, both at and
+for the tactlessness of which Mary was guilty. But, the first shameful
+stab over, she felt the better of it; yes, it was a relief to speak to
+some one of what she had borne alone for so long. To speak of it, and
+even to argue round it a little; for, like most wrongdoers, Laura soon
+acquired a taste for dwelling on her misdeed. And Mary, being entirely
+without humour, and also unversed in dealing with criminals, did not
+divine that this was just a form of self-indulgence. It was Cupid who
+said: "Look here, Infant, you'll be getting cocky about what you
+did, if you don't look out."
+
+Mary would not allow that a single one of Laura's excuses held water.
+
+"That's the sheerest nonsense. You don't seem to realise that you tried
+to defame another person's moral character," she said, in the assured,
+superior way that so impressed Laura.--And this aspect of the case,
+which had never once occurred to her, left Laura open-mouthed; and yet a
+little doubtful: Mr. Shepherd was surely too far above her, and too
+safely ensconced in holiness, to be injured by anything she might say.
+But the idea gave her food for thought; and she even tentatively
+developed her story along these unfamiliar lines, just to see how it
+might have turned out.
+
+One night as they were undressing for bed, Mary spoke, with the same
+fireless depreciation, of the behaviour of a classmate which had been
+brought to her notice that day. This girl was said to have
+nefariously "copied" from another, in the course of a written
+examination; and, as prefect of her class Mary was bound to track the
+evil down. "I shall make them both show me their papers as soon as they
+get them back; and then, if I find proof of what's being said, I must
+tackle her. Just as I tackled you, Laura."
+
+Laura flushed. "Oh, M. P., I've never 'copied' in my life!" she cried.
+
+"Probably not. But those things all belong in the same box: lying, and
+'copying', and stealing."
+
+"You never WILL believe me when I say I didn't know anything about that
+horrid Chinky. I only told a few crams--that was quite
+different."
+
+"I think it's most unfortunate, Laura, that you persist in clinging to
+that idea."
+
+Here M. P. was obliged to pause; for she had put a lock of hair between
+her teeth while she did something to a plait at the back. As soon as she
+could speak again, she went on: "You and your few crams! Have you ever
+thought, pray, what a state of things it would be, if we all went about
+telling false-hoods, and saying it didn't matter, they were merely a few
+little fibs?--What are you laughing at?"
+
+"I'm not laughing. I mean . . . I just smiled. I was only thinking how
+funny it would be--Sandy, and old Gurley, and Jim Chapman, all going
+round making up things that had never happened."
+
+"You've a queer notion of what's funny. Have you utterly no respect for
+the truth?"
+
+"Yes, of course I have. But I say"--Laura, who always slipped quickly
+out of her clothes, was sitting in her nightgown on the edge of the bed,
+hugging her knees. "I say, M. P., if everybody told stories, and
+everybody knew everybody else was telling them, then truth wouldn't be
+any good any more at all, would it? If nobody used it?"
+
+"What rubbish you do talk!" said Mary serenely, as she shook her
+toothbrush on to a towel and rubbed it dry.
+
+"As if truth were a soap!" remarked Cupid who was already in bed,
+reading NANA, and trying to smoke a cigarette under the blankets.
+
+"You can't do away with truth, child."
+
+"But why not? Who says so? It isn't a law."
+
+"Don't try to be so sharp, Laura."
+
+"I don't mean to, M. P.--But what IS truth, anyhow?" asked
+Laura.
+
+"The Bible is truth. Can you do away with the Bible, pray?"
+
+"Of course not. But M. P. . . . The Bible isn't quite all truth, you
+know. My father----" here she broke off in some confusion, remembering
+Uncle Tom.
+
+"Well, what about him? You don't want to say, I hope, that he didn't
+believe in the Bible?"
+
+Laura drove back the: "Of course not!" that was all but over her
+lips. "Well, not exactly," she said, and grew very red. "But you KNOW, M.
+P., whales don't have big enough throats ever to have swallowed Jonah."
+
+"Little girls shouldn't talk about what they don't understand. The Bible
+is God's Word; and God is Truth."
+
+"You're a silly infant," threw in Cupid, coughing as she spoke. "Truth
+has got to be--and honesty, too. If it didn't exist, there couldn't be
+any state, or laws, or any social life. It's one of the things that
+makes men different from animals, and the people who boss us know pretty
+well what they're about, you bet when they punish the ruffians who don't
+practise it."
+
+"Yes, now THAT I see," agreed Laura eagerly. "Then truth's a useful
+thing.--Oh, and that's probably what it means, too, when you say:
+Honesty is the best Policy."
+
+"I never heard such a child," said M. P., shocked. "Cupid, you really
+shouldn't put such things into her head.--You're down-right immoral,
+Laura."
+
+"Oh, how CAN you say such a horrid thing?"
+
+"Well, your ideas are simply dreadful. You ought to try your
+hardest to improve them."
+
+"I do, M. P., really I do."
+
+"You don't succeed. I think there must be a screw loose in you
+somewhere."
+
+"Anyhow, I vote we adjourn this meeting," said Cupid, recovering from a
+fresh cough and splutter. "Or old Gurley'll be coming in to put me on a
+mustard plaster.--As for you, Infant, if you take the advice of a chap
+who has seen life, you'll keep your ideas to yourself: they're too crude
+for this elegant world."
+
+"Right you are!" said Laura cheerfully.
+
+She was waiting by the gas-jet till M.P. had folded her last garment,
+and she shuffled her bare feet one over the other as she stood; for it
+was a cold night. The light out, she hopped into bed in the dark. 
+
+
+
+
+XXI.
+
+
+
+But the true seal was set on her regeneration when she was invited to
+join the boarders' Literary Society; of which Cupid and Mary were the
+leading spirits. This carried her back, at one stroke, into the swing of
+school life. For everybody who was anybody belonged to the society. And,
+despite her friendship with the head of her class, Laura still knew what
+it was to get the cold shoulder.
+
+But this was to some extent her own fault. At the present stage of her
+career she was an extraordinarily prickly child, and even to her two
+sponsors did not at times present a very amiable outside: like a
+hedgehog, she was ever ready to shoot out her spines. With regard, that
+is, to her veracity. She had been so badly grazed, in her recent
+encounter, that she was now constantly seeing doubt where no doubt was;
+and this wakeful attitude of suspicion towards others did not make for
+brotherly love. The amenity of her manners suffered, too: though she
+kept to her original programme of not saying all she thought, yet what
+she was forced to say she blurted out in such a precise and blunt
+fashion that it made a disagreeable impression. At the same time, a
+growing pedantry in trifles warped both her imagination and her
+sympathies: under the aegis of M. P., she rapidly learned to be the
+latter's rival in an adherence to bald fact, and in her contumely for
+those who departed from it. Indeed, before the year spent in Mary's
+company was out, Laura was well on the way towards becoming one
+of those uncomfortable people who, concerned only for their own
+salvation, fire the truth at you on every occasion, without regard for
+your tender places.--So she remained but scantly popular.
+
+Hence, her admission to the Literary Society augured well.
+
+Her chief qualifications for membership were that she could make verses,
+and was also very fond of reading. At school, however, this taste had
+been quiescent; for books were few. Still, she had read whatever she
+could lay hands on, and for the past half-year or more she had fared
+like a little pig in a clover field. Since Christmas, she was one of the
+few permitted to do morning practice on the grand piano in Mrs.
+Strachey's drawing-room--an honour, it is true, not overmuch valued by
+its recipients, for Mrs. Gurley's bedroom lay just above, and that lady
+could swoop down on whoever was weak enough to take a little rest. But
+Laura snapped her fingers at such a flimsy objection; for this was the
+wonderful room round the walls of which low, open bookshelves ran; and
+she was soon bold enough, on entering, hastily to select a book to read
+while she played, always on the alert to pop it behind her music, should
+anyone come into the room.
+
+For months, she browsed unchecked. As her choice had to be made with
+extreme celerity, and from those shelves nearest the piano, it was in
+the nature of things that it was not invariably a happy one. For some
+time she had but moderate luck, and sampled queer foods. To these must
+be reckoned a translation of FAUST, which she read through, to the end
+of the First Part at least, with a kind of dreary wonder why
+such a dull thing should be called great. For her next repast, she
+sought hard and it was in the course of this rummage that she had the
+strangest find of all. Running a skilled eye over the length of a shelf
+close at hand, she hit on a slim, blue volume, the title of which at
+once arrested her attention. For, notwithstanding her fourteen years,
+and her dabblings in Richardson and Scott, Laura's liking for a real
+child's book was as strong as it had ever been; and A DOLL'S HOUSE
+seemed to promise good things. Deftly extracting the volume, she struck
+up her scales and began to read.
+
+This was the day on which, after breakfast, Mrs. Gurley pulverised her
+with the remark: "A new, and, I must say, extremely interesting, fashion
+of playing scales, Laura Rambotham! To hold, the forte pedal down, from
+beginning to end!"
+
+Laura was unconscious of having sinned in this way. But it might quite
+well be so. For she had spent a topsy-turvy, though highly engrossing
+hour. In place of the children's story she anticipated, she had found
+herself, on opening the book, confronted by the queerest stuff she had
+ever seen in print. From the opening sentence on. To begin with, it was
+a play--and Laura had never had a modern prose play in her hand before
+--and then it was all about the oddest, yet the most commonplace people.
+It seemed to her amazingly unreal--how these people spoke and behaved--
+she had never known anyone like them; and yet again so true, in the way
+it dragged in everyday happenings, so petty in its rendering of petty
+things, that it bewildered and repelled her: why, some one might just as
+well write a book about Mother or Sarah! Her young, romantic
+soul rose in arms against this, its first bluff contact with realism,
+against such a dispiriting sobriety of outlook. Something within her
+wanted to cry out in protest as she read--for read she did, on three
+successive days, with an interest she could not explain. And that was
+not all. It was worse that the people in this book--the extraordinary
+person who was married, and had children, and yet ate biscuits out of a
+bag and said she didn't; the man who called her his lark and his
+squirrel--as if any man ever did call his wife such names!--all these
+people seemed eternally to be meaning something different from what they
+said; something that was for ever eluding her. It was most irritating.--
+There was, moreover, no mention of a doll's house in the whole three
+acts.
+
+The state of confusion this booklet left her in, she allayed with a
+little old brown leather volume of Longfellow. And HYPERION was so much
+more to her liking that she even ventured to borrow it from its place on
+the shelf, in order to read it at her leisure, braving the chance that
+her loan, were it discovered, might be counted against her as a theft.
+
+It hung together, no doubt, with the after-effects of her dip into Ibsen
+that, on her sitting down to write the work that was to form her
+passport to the Society, her mind should incline to the most romantic of
+romantic themes. Not altogether, though: Laura's taste, such as it was,
+for literature had, like all young people's, a mighty bias towards those
+books which turned their backs on reality: she sought not truth, but the
+miracle. However, though she had thus taken sides, there was still a
+yawning gap to be bridged between her ready acceptance of the
+honourable invitation, and the composition of a masterpiece. Thanks to
+her wonted inability to project her thoughts beyond the moment, she had
+been so unthinking of possible failure that Cupid had found it necessary
+to interject: "Here, I say, don't blow!" Whereas, when she came to write,
+she sat with her pen poised over the paper for nearly half an hour,
+without bringing forth a word. First, there was the question of form:
+she considered, then abruptly dismissed, the idea of writing verses: the
+rhymes with love and dove, and heart and part, which could have been
+managed, were, she felt, too silly and sentimental to be laid before her
+quizzical audience. Next, what to write about--a simple theme, such as
+a fairy-tale, was not for a moment to be contemplated. No, Laura had
+always flown her hawk high, and she was now bent on making a splutter.
+It ended by being a toss-up between a play in the Shakesperian manner
+and a novel after Scott. She decided on the novel. It should be a
+romance of Venice, with abundant murder and mystery in it, and a black,
+black villain, such as her soul loved--no macaroon-nibblers or rompers
+with children for her! And having thus attuned her mind to scarlet
+deeds, she set to work. But she found it tremendously difficult to pin
+her story to paper: she saw things clearly enough, and could have
+related them by word of mouth; but did she try to write them down they
+ran to mist; and though she toiled quite literally in the sweat of her
+brow, yet when the eventful day came she had but three niggardly pages
+to show for her pains.
+
+About twenty girls formed the Society, which assembled one
+Saturday evening in an empty music-room. All were not, of course,
+equally productive: some had brought it no further than a riddle: and it
+was just these drones who, knowing nothing of the pother composition
+implied, criticised most stringently the efforts of the rest. Several
+members had pretty enough talents, Laura's two room-mates among the
+number: on the night Laura made her debut, the weightiest achievement
+was, without doubt, M. P.'s essay on "Magnanimity"; and Laura's eyes
+grew moist as she listened to its stirring phrases. Next best--to her
+thinking, at least--was a humorous episode by Cupid, who had a gift
+that threw Laura into a fit of amaze; and this was the ability to expand
+infinitely little into infinitely much; to rig out a trifle in many
+words, so that in the end it seemed ever so much bigger than it really
+was--just as a thrifty merchant boils his oranges, to swell them to
+twice their size.
+
+Laura being the youngest member, her affair came last on the programme:
+she had to sit and listen to the others, her cheeks hot, her hands very
+cold. Presently all were done, and then Cupid, who was chairman, called
+on "a new author, Rambotham, who it is hoped will prove a valuable
+acquisition to the Society, to read us his maiden effort".
+
+Laura rose to her feet and, trembling with nervousness, stuttered forth
+her prose. The three little pages shot past like a flash; she had barely
+stood up before she was obliged to sit down again, leaving her hearers,
+who had only just re-adopted their listening attitudes, agape with
+astonishment. She could have endured, with phlegm, the ridicule this
+malheur earned her: what was harder to stomach was that her
+paper heroics made utterly no impression. She suffered all the
+humiliation of a flabby fiasco, and, till bedtime, shrank out of her
+friends' way.
+
+"You were warned not to be too cocky, you know," Mary said judicially,
+on seeing her downcast air.
+
+"I didn't mean to be, really.--Then you don't think what I wrote was up
+to much, M. P.?"
+
+"Mm," said the elder girl, in a non-committal way.
+
+Here Cupid chimed in. "Look here, Infant, I want to ask you something.
+Have you ever been in Venice?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ever seen a gondola?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or the Doge's palace?--or a black-cloaked assassin?--or a masked
+lady?"
+
+"You know I haven't," murmured Laura, humbled to the dust.
+
+"And probably never will. Well then, why on earth try to write wooden,
+second-hand rubbish like that?"
+
+"Second-hand? . . . But Cupid . . . think of Scott! He couldn't have
+seen half he told about?"
+
+"My gracious!" ejaculated Cupid, and sat down and fanned herself with a
+hairbrush. "You don't imagine you're a Scott, do you? Here, hold me, M.
+P., I'm going to faint!"--and at Laura's quick and scarlet denial, she
+added: "Well, why the unmentionable not use the eyes the Lord has given
+you, and write about what's before them every day of your life?"
+
+"Do you think that would be better?"
+
+"I don't think--I know it would."
+
+But Laura was not so easily convinced as all that.
+
+Ever a talented imitator, she next tried her hand at an essay on an
+abstract subject. This was a failure: you could not SEE things, when you
+wrote about, say, "Beneficence"; and Laura's thinking was done mainly in
+pictures. Matters were still worse when she tinkered at Cupid's especial
+genre: her worthless little incident stared at her, naked and scraggy,
+from the sheet; she had no wealth of words at her disposal in which to
+deck it out. So, with a sigh, she turned back to the advice Cupid had
+given her, and prepared to make a faithful transcript of actuality. She
+called what she now wrote: "A Day at School", and conscientiously set
+down detail on detail; so fearful, this time, of over-brevity, that she
+spun the account out to twenty pages; though the writing of it was as
+distasteful to her as her reading of A DOLL'S HOUSE had been.
+
+At the subsequent meeting of the Society, expression of opinion was not
+lacking.
+
+"Oh, Jehoshaphat! How much more?"
+
+"Here, let me get out. I've had enough."
+
+"I say, you forgot to count how many steps it took you to come
+downstairs."
+
+Till the chairman had pity on the embarrassed author and said: "Look
+here, Laura, I think you'd better keep the rest for another time."
+
+"It was just what you told me to do," Laura reproached Cupid that night:
+she was on the brink of tears.
+
+But Cupid was disinclined to shoulder the responsibility. "Told you to
+be as dull and long-winded as that? Infant, it's a whacker!"
+
+"But it was TRUE what I wrote--every word of it."
+
+Neither of the two elder girls was prepared to discuss this vital point.
+Cupid shifted ground. "Good Lord, Laura, but it's hard to drive a thing
+into YOUR brain-pan.--You don't need to be ALL true on paper, silly
+child!"
+
+"Last time you said I had to."
+
+"Well, if you want it, my candid opinion is that you haven't any talent
+for this kind of thing.--Now turn off the gas."
+
+As the light in the room went out, a kind of inner light seemed to go up
+in Laura; and both then and on the following days she thought hard. She
+was very ambitious, anxious to shine, not ready to accept defeat; and to
+the next literary contest she brought the description of an excursion to
+the hills and gullies that surrounded Warrenega; into which she had
+worked an adventure with some vagrant blacks. She and Pin and the boys
+had often picnicked on these hills, with their lunches packed in
+billies; and she had seen the caves and rocky holes where blackfellows
+were said to have hidden themselves in early times; but neither this
+particular excursion, nor the exciting incident which she described with
+all the aplomb of an eyewitness, had ever taken place. That is to say:
+not a word of her narration was true, but every word of it might have
+been true.
+
+And with this she had an unqualified success.
+
+"I believe there's something in you after all," said Cupid to her that
+night. "Anyhow, you know now what it is to be true, yet not dull and
+prosy."
+
+And Laura manfully choked back her desire to cry out that not a
+word of her story was fact.
+
+She was long in falling asleep. Naturally, she was elated and excited by
+her success; but also a new and odd piece of knowledge had niched itself
+in her brain. It was this. In your speech, your talk with others, you
+must be exact to the point of pedantry, and never romance or draw the
+long-bow; or you would be branded as an abominable liar. Whereas, as
+soon as you put pen to paper, provided you kept one foot planted on
+probability, you might lie as hard as you liked: indeed, the more
+vigorously you lied, the louder would be your hearers' applause.
+
+And Laura fell asleep over a chuckle. 
+
+
+
+
+XXII.
+
+
+
+UND VERGESST MIR AUCH DAS GUTE LACHEN NICHT!
+
+NIETZSCHE
+
+
+And then, alas! just as she rode high on this wave of approbation, Laura
+suffered another of those drops in the esteem of her fellows, another of
+those mental upsets, which from time to time had thrown her young life
+out of gear.
+
+True, what now came was not exactly her own fault; though it is doubtful
+whether a single one of her companions would have made her free of an
+excuse. They looked on, round-eyed, mouths a-stretch. Once more, the
+lambkin called Laura saw fit to sunder itself from the flock, and to cut
+mad capers in sight of them all. And their delectation was as frank as
+their former wrath had been.--As for Laura, as usual she did not stop
+to think till it was too late; but danced lightly away to her own
+undoing.
+
+The affair began pleasantly enough. A member of the Literary Society was
+the girl with the twinkly brown eyes--she who had gone out of her way
+to give Laura a kindly word after the Shepherd debacle. This girl,
+Evelyn Souttar by name, was also the only one of the audience who had
+not joined in the laugh provoked by Laura's first appearance as an
+author. Laura had never forgotten this; and she would smile shyly at
+Evelyn when their looks met. But a dozen reasons existed why there
+should have been no further rapport between them. Although now in the
+fifth form, Laura had remained childish for her age: whereas
+Evelyn was over eighteen, and only needed to turn up her hair to be
+quite grown-up. She had matriculated the previous Christmas, and was at
+present putting away a rather desultory half-year, before leaving school
+for good. In addition, she was rich, pampered and very pretty--the last
+comrade in the world for drab little Laura.
+
+One evening, as the latter was passing through the dining-hall, she
+found Evelyn, who studied where she chose, disconsolately running her
+fingers through her gold-brown hair.
+
+"I say, Kiddy," she called to Laura. "You know Latin, don't you? Just
+give us a hand with this."--Latin had not been one of Evelyn's
+subjects, and she was now employing some of her spare time in studying
+the language with Mr. Strachey, who taught it after a fashion of his
+own. "How on earth would you say: 'We had not however rid here so long,
+but should have tided it up the river'? What's the old fool mean by
+that?" and she pushed an open volume of ROBINSON CRUSOE towards Laura.
+
+Laura helped to the best of her ability.
+
+"Thanks awfully," said Evelyn. "You're a clever chickabiddy. But you must
+let me help you with something in return. What's hardest?"
+
+"Filling baths and papering rooms," replied Laura candidly.
+
+"Arithmetic, eh? Well, if ever you want a sum done, come to me."
+
+But Laura was temperamentally unable to accept so vague an invitation;
+and here the matter closed.
+
+When, consequently, Miss Chapman summoned her one evening to
+tell her that she was to change her present bedroom for Evelyn's, the
+news came as a great shock to her.
+
+"Change my room?" she echoed, in slow disgust. "Oh, I can't, Miss
+Chapman!"
+
+"You've got to, Laura, if Mrs. Gurley says so," expostulated the kindly
+governess.
+
+"But I won't! There MUST be some mistake. Just when I'm so comfortably
+settled, too.--Very well, then, Miss Chapman, I'll speak to Mrs. Gurley
+myself."
+
+She carried out this threat, and, for daring to question orders,
+received the soundest snubbing she had had for many a long day.
+
+That night she was very bitter about it all, and the more so because
+Mary and Cupid did not, to her thinking, show sufficient sympathy.
+
+"I believe you're both glad I'm going. It's a beastly shame. Why must I
+always be odd man out?"
+
+"Look here, Infant, don't adopt that tone, please," said Cupid
+magisterially. "Or you'll make us glad in earnest. People who are always
+up in arms about things are the greatest bores in the world."
+
+So the following afternoon Laura wryly took up armfuls of her
+belongings, mounted a storey higher, and deposited them on the second
+bed in Evelyn's room.
+
+The elder girl had had this room to herself for over a year now, and
+Laura felt sure would be chafing inwardly at her intrusion. For days she
+stole mousily in and out, avoiding the hours when Evelyn was there,
+getting up earlier in the morning, hurrying into bed at night
+and feeling very sore indeed at the sufferance on which she supposed
+herself to be.
+
+But once Evelyn caught her and said: "Don't, for gracious' sake, knock
+each time you want to come in, child. This is your room now as well as
+mine."
+
+Laura reddened, and blurted out something about knowing how she must
+hate to have HER stuck in there.
+
+Evelyn wrinkled up her forehead and laughed. "What rot! Do you think I'd
+have asked to have you, if I hated it so much?"
+
+"You asked to have me?" gasped Laura.
+
+"Of course--didn't you know? Old Gurley said I'd need to have some one;
+so I chose you."
+
+Laura was too dumbfounded, and too diffident, to ask the grounds of such
+a choice. But the knowledge that it was so, worked an instant change in
+her.
+
+In all the three years she had been at school, she had not got beyond a
+surface friendliness with any of her fellows. Even those who had been
+her "chums" had wandered like shades through the groves of her
+affection: rough, teasing Bertha; pretty, lazy Inez; perky Tilly,
+slangily frank Maria and Kate, Mary and her moral influence, clever,
+instructive Cupid: to none of them had she been drawn by any deeper
+sense of affinity. And though she had come to believe, in the course of
+the last, more peaceful year, that she had grown used to being what you
+would call an unpopular girl--one, that is, with whom no one ever
+shared a confidence--yet seldom was there a child who longed more
+ardently to be liked, or suffered more acutely under dislike. Apart
+however from the brusque manner she had contracted, in her search
+after truth, it must be admitted that Laura had but a small
+talent for friendship; she did not grasp the constant give-and-take
+intimacy implies; the liking of others had to be brought to her,
+unsought, she, on the other hand, being free to stand back and consider
+whether or no the feeling was worth returning. And friends are not made
+in this fashion.
+
+But Evelyn had stoutly, and without waiting for permission, crossed the
+barrier; and each new incident in her approach was pleasanter than the
+last. Laura was pleased, and flattered, and round the place where her
+heart was, she felt a warm and comfortable glow.
+
+She began to return the liking, with interest, after the manner of a
+lonely, bottled-up child. And everything about Evelyn made it easy to
+grow fond of her. To begin with, Laura loved pretty things and pretty
+people; and her new friend was out and away the prettiest girl in the
+school. Then, too, she was clever, and that counted; you did not make a
+friend of a fool. But her chief characteristics were a certain sound
+common sense, and an inexhaustible fund of good-nature--a careless,
+happy, laughing sunniness, that was as grateful to those who came into
+touch with it as a rare ointment is grateful to the skin. This
+kindliness arose, it might be, in the first place from indolence: it was
+less trouble to be merry and amiable than to put oneself out to be
+selfish, which also meant standing a fire of disagreeable words and
+looks; and then, too, it was really hard for one who had never had a
+whim crossed to be out of humour. But, whatever its origin, the
+good-nature was there, everlastingly; and Laura soon learnt that she
+could cuddle in under it, and be screened by it, as a lamb is
+screened by its mother's woolly coat.
+
+Evelyn was the only person who did not either hector her, or feel it a
+duty to clip and prune at her: she accepted Laura for what she was--for
+herself. Indeed, she even seemed to lay weight on Laura's bits of
+opinions, which the girl had grown so chary of offering; and, under the
+sunshine of this treatment, Laura shot up and flowered like a spring
+bulb. She began to speak out her thoughts again; she unbosomed herself
+of dark little secrets; and finally did what she would never have
+believed possible: sitting one night in her nightgown, on the edge of
+Evelyn's bed, she made a full confession of the pickle she had got
+herself into, over her visit to the Shepherds.
+
+To her astonishment, Evelyn, who was already in bed, laughed till the
+tears ran down her cheeks. At Laura's solemn-faced incredulity she said:
+
+"I say, Kiddy, but that WAS rich. To think a chicken of your size sold
+them like that. It's the best joke I've heard for an age. Tell us again
+--from the beginning."
+
+Nothing loath Laura started in afresh, and in this, the second telling,
+embroidered the edge of her tale with a few fancy stitches, in a way she
+had not ventured on for months past; so that Evelyn was more tickled
+than before.
+
+"No wonder they were mad about being had like that. You little rascal!"
+
+She was equally amused by Laura's description of the miserable week she
+had spent, trying to make up her mind to confess.
+
+"You ridiculous sprat! Why didn't you come to me? We'd have let
+them down with a good old bump."
+
+But Laura could not so easily forget the humiliations she had been
+forced to suffer, and delicately hinted to her friend at M. P.'s moral
+strictures. With her refreshing laugh, Evelyn brushed these aside as
+well.
+
+"Tommyrot! Never mind that old jumble-sale of all the virtues. It was
+jolly clever of a mite like you to bamboozle them as you did--take my
+word for that."
+
+This jocose way of treating the matter seemed to put it in an entirely
+new light; Laura could even smile at it herself. In the days that
+followed, she learned, indeed, to laugh over it with Evelyn, and to
+share the latter's view that she had been superior in wit to those she
+had befooled. This meant a great and healthy gain in self-assurance for
+Laura. It also led to her laying more and more weight on what her friend
+said. For it was not as if Evelyn had a low moral standard; far from
+that: she was honest and straightforward, too proud, or, it might be,
+too lazy to tell a lie herself--with all the complications lying
+involved--and Laura never heard her say a harder thing of anyone than
+what she had just said about Mary Pidwall.
+
+The two talked late into every night after this, Laura perched,
+monkey-fashion, on the side of her friend's bed. Evelyn had all the
+accumulated wisdom of eighteen, and was able to clear her young
+companion up on many points about which Laura had so far been in the
+dark. But when, in time, she came to relate the mortifications
+she had suffered--and was still called on to suffer--at the hands of
+the other sex, Evelyn pooh-poohed the subject.
+
+"Time enough in a couple of years for that. Don't bother your head about
+it in the meantime."
+
+"I don't now--not a bit. I only wanted to know why. Sometimes, Evvy, do
+you know, they liked to talk to quite little kids of seven and eight
+better than me."
+
+"Perhaps you talked too much yourself--and about yourself?"
+
+"I don't think I did. And if you don't talk something, they yawn and go
+away."
+
+"You've got to let them do the lion's share, child. Just you sit still,
+and listen, and pretend you like it--even though you're bored to
+extinction."
+
+"And they never need to pretend anything, I suppose? No, I think they're
+horrid. You don't like them either, Evvy, do you? . . . any more than I
+do?"
+
+Evelyn laughed.
+
+"Say what you think they are," persisted Laura and waggled the other's
+arm, to make her speak.
+
+"Mostly fools," said Evelyn, and laughed again--laughed in all the
+conscious power of lovely eighteen.
+
+Overjoyed at this oneness of mind, Laura threw her arms round her
+friend's neck and kissed her. "You dear!" she said.
+
+And yet, a short time afterwards, it was on this very head that she had
+to bear the shock of a rude awakening. 
+
+Evelyn's people came to Melbourne that year from the Riverina.
+Evelyn was allowed considerable freedom, and one night, by special
+permit, Laura also accepted an invitation to dinner and the theatre. The
+two girls drove to a hotel, where they found Evelyn's mother, elegant
+but a little stern, and a young lady-friend. Only the four of them were
+present at dinner, and the meal passed off smoothly; though the
+strangeness of dining in a big hotel had the effect of tying Laura's
+tongue. Another thing that abashed her was the dress of the young lady,
+who sat opposite. This person--she must have been about the ripe age of
+twenty-five--was nipped into a tight little pink satin bodice, which,
+at the back, exposed the whole of two very bony shoulder-blades. But it
+was the front of the dress that Laura faced; and, having imbibed strict
+views of propriety from Mother, she wriggled on her chair whenever she
+raised her eyes.
+
+They drove to the theatre--though it was only a few doors off. The
+seats were in the dress circle. The ladies sat in the front row, the
+girls, who were in high frocks, behind.
+
+Evelyn made a face of laughing discontent. "It's so ridiculous the mater
+won't let me dress."
+
+These words gave Laura a kind of stab. "Oh Evvy, I think you're EVER so
+much nicer as you are," she whispered, and squeezed her friend's hand.
+
+Evelyn could not answer, for the lady in pink had leant back and tapped
+her with her fan. "It doesn't look as if Jim were coming, my dear."
+
+Evelyn laughed, in a peculiar way. "Oh, I guess he'll turn up all right."
+
+There had been some question of a person of this name at dinner; but
+Laura had paid no great heed to what was said. Now, she sat up
+sharply, for Evelyn exclaimed: "There he is!"
+
+It was a man, a real man--not a boy--with a drooping, fair moustache,
+a single eyeglass in one eye, and a camellia-bud in his buttonhole. For
+the space of a breathless second Laura connected him with the pink
+satin; then he dropped into a vacant seat at Evelyn's side.
+
+From this moment on, Laura's pleasure in her expensive seat, in the
+pretty blue theatre and its movable roof, in the gay trickeries of the
+MIKADO, slowly fizzled out. Evelyn had no more thought for her. Now and
+then, it is true, she would turn in her affectionate way and ask Laura
+if she were all right just as one satisfies oneself that a little child
+is happy--but her real attention was for the man at her side. In the
+intervals, the two kept up a perpetual buzz of chat, broken only by
+Evelyn's low laughs. Laura sat neglected, sat stiff and cold with
+disappointment, a great bitterness welling up within her. Before the
+performance had dragged to an end, she would have liked to put her head
+down and cry.
+
+"Tired?" queried Evelyn noticing her pinched look, as they drove home in
+the wagonette. But the mother was there, too, so Laura said no.
+
+Directly, however, the bedroom door shut behind them, she fell into a
+tantrum, a fit of sullen rage, which she accentuated till Evelyn could
+not but notice it.
+
+"What's the matter with you? Didn't you enjoy yourself?"
+
+"No, I hated it," returned Laura passionately.
+
+Evelyn laughed a little at this, but with an air of humorous
+dismay. "I must take care, then, not to ask you out again."
+
+"I wouldn't go. Not for anything!"
+
+"What on earth's the matter with you?"
+
+"Nothing's the matter."
+
+"Well, if that's all, make haste and get into bed. You're overtired."
+
+"Go to bed yourself!"
+
+"I am, as fast as I can. I can hardly keep my eyes open;" and Evelyn
+yawned heartily.
+
+When Laura saw that she meant it, she burst out: "You're nothing but a
+story-teller--that's what you are! You said you didn't like them . . .
+that they were mostly fools . . . and then . . . then, to go on as you
+did to-night." Her voice was shaky with tears.
+
+"Oh, that's it, is it? Come now, get to bed. We'll talk about it in the
+morning."
+
+"I never want to speak to you again."
+
+"You're a silly child. But I'm really too sleepy to quarrel with you
+to-night."
+
+"I hate you--hate you!"
+
+"I shall survive it."
+
+She turned out the light as she spoke, settled herself on her pillow,
+and composedly went to sleep.
+
+Laura's rage redoubled. Throwing herself on the floor she burst into
+angry tears, and cried as loudly as she dared, in the hope of keeping
+her companion awake. But Evelyn was a magnificent sleeper; and remained
+undisturbed. So after a time Laura rose, drew up the blind, opened the
+window and sat down on the sill.
+
+It was a bitterly cold night, of milky-white moonlight; each bush and
+shrub carved its jet-black shadow on paths and grass. Across
+Evelyn's bed fell a great patch of light: this, or the chill air would,
+it was to be trusted, wake her. Meanwhile Laura sat in her thin
+nightgown and shivered, feeling the cold intensely after the great heat
+of the day. She hoped with all her heart that she would be lucky enough
+to get an inflammation of the lungs. Then, Evelyn would be sorry she had
+been so cruel to her.
+
+It was nearly two o'clock, and she had several times found herself
+nodding, when the sleeper suddenly opened her eyes and sat bolt upright
+in bed.
+
+"Laura, good heavens, what are you doing at the window? Oh, you wicked
+child, you'll catch your death of cold! Get into bed at once."
+
+And, the culprit still maintaining an immovable silence, Evelyn dragged
+her to bed by main force, and tucked her in as tightly as a mummy. 
+
+
+
+
+XXIII.
+
+
+
+GUT UND BOSE UND LUST UND LEID UND ICH UND DU.
+
+NIETZSCHE
+
+
+"Laura, you're a cipher!"
+
+"I'm nothing of the sort!" threw back Laura indignantly. "You're one
+yourself.--What does she mean, Evvy?" she asked getting out of earshot
+of the speaker.
+
+"Goodness knows. Don't mind her, Poppet."
+
+It was an oppressive evening: all day long a hot north wind had scoured
+the streets, veiling things and people in clouds of gritty dust; the sky
+was still like the prolonged reflection of a great fire. The hoped-for
+change had not come, and the girls who strolled the paths of the garden
+were white and listless. They walked in couples, with interlaced arms;
+and members of the Matriculation Class carried books with them, the
+present year being one of much struggling and heartburning, and few
+leisured moments. Mary Pidwall and Cupid were together under an acacia
+tree at the gate of the tennis-court; and it was M. P. who had cast the
+above gibe at Laura. At least Laura took it as a gibe, and scowled
+darkly; for she could never grow hardened to ridicule.
+
+As she and Evelyn re-passed this spot in their perambulation, a merry
+little lump of a girl called Lolo, who darted her head from side to side
+when she spoke, with the movements of a watchful bird--this [P.241]
+Lolo called: "Evelyn, come here, I want to tell you something."
+
+"Yes, what is it?" asked Evelyn, but without obeying the summons; for
+she felt Laura's grip of her arm tighten.
+
+"It's a secret. You must come over here."
+
+"Hold on a minute, Poppet," said Evelyn persuasively, and crossed the
+lawn with her characteristically lazy saunter. Minutes went by; she did
+not return.
+
+"Look at her Laura-ship!" said a saucebox to her partner. The latter
+made "Hee-haw, hee-haw!" and both laughed derisively.
+
+The object of their scorn stood at the farther end of the wire-net
+fence: all five fingers of her right hand were thrust through the holes
+of the netting, and held oddly and unconsciously outspread; she stood on
+one leg, and with her other foot rubbed up and down behind her ankle;
+mouth and brow were sullen, her black eyes bent wrathfully on her
+faithless friend.
+
+"A regular moon-calf!" said Cupid, looking up from THE TEMPEST, which
+was balanced breast-high on the narrow wooden top of the fence.
+
+"Mark my words, that child'll be plucked in her 'tests'," observed M. P.
+
+"Serve her right, say I, for playing the billy-ass," returned Cupid, and
+killed a giant mosquito with such a whack that her wrist was stained
+with its blood. "Ugh, you brute! . . . gorging yourself on me. But I'm
+dashed if I know how Evelyn can be bothered to have her always dangling
+round."
+
+"She's a cipher," repeated Mary, in so judicial a tone that it closed
+the conversation.
+
+Laura, not altogether blind to externals, saw that her
+companions made fun of her. But at the present pass, the strength of her
+feelings quite out-ran her capacity for self-control; she was unable to
+disguise what she felt, and though it made her the laughing-stock of the
+school. What scheme was the birdlike Lolo hatching against her? Why did
+Evelyn not come back?--these were the thoughts that buzzed round inside
+her head, as the mosquitoes buzzed outside.--And meanwhile the
+familiar, foolish noises of the garden at evening knocked at her ear. On
+the other side of the hedge a batch of third-form girls were whispering,
+with choked laughter, a doggerel rhyme which was hard to say, and which
+meant something quite different did the tongue trip over a certain
+letter. Of two girls who were playing tennis in half-hearted fashion,
+the one next Laura said 'Oh, damn!' every time she missed a ball. And
+over the parched, dusty grass the hot wind blew, carrying with it, from
+the kitchens, a smell of cabbage, of fried onions, of greasy dish-water.
+
+Then Evelyn returned, and a part, a part only of the cloud lifted from
+Laura's brow.
+
+"What did she want?"
+
+"Oh, nothing much."
+
+"Then you're not going to tell me?"
+
+I can't.
+
+"What business has she to have secrets with you?" said Laura furiously.
+And for a full round of the garden she did not open her lips.
+
+Her companions were not alone in eyeing this lopsided friendship with an
+amused curiosity. The governesses also smiled at it, and were surprised
+at Evelyn's endurance of the tyranny into which Laura's liking
+had degenerated. On this particular evening, two who were sitting on the
+verandah-bench came back to the subject.
+
+"Just look at that Laura Rambotham again, will you?" said Miss Snodgrass
+in her tart way. "Sulking for all she's worth. What a little fool she
+is!"
+
+"I'm sure I wonder Mrs. Gurley hasn't noticed how badly she's working
+just now," said Miss Chapman; and her face wore it best-meaning, but
+most uncertain smile.
+
+"Oh, you know very well if Mrs. Gurley doesn't want to see a thing she
+doesn't," retorted Miss Snodgrass. "A regular talent for going blind, I
+call it--especially where Evelyn Souttar's concerned."
+
+"Oh, I don't think you should talk like that," urged Miss Chapman
+nervously.
+
+"I say what I think," asserted Miss Snodgrass. "And if I had my way, I'd
+give Laura Rambotham something she wouldn't forget. That child'll come
+to a bad end yet.--How do you like that colour, Miss C.?" She had a
+nest of cloth-patterns in her lap, and held one up as she spoke.
+
+"Oh, you shouldn't say such things," remonstrated Miss Chapman. "There's
+many a true word said in jest." She settled her glasses on her
+nose. "It's very nice, but I think I like a bottle-green better."
+
+"Of course, I don't mean she'll end on the gallows, if that's what
+troubles you. But she's frightfully unbalanced, and, to my mind, ought
+to have some sense knocked into her before it's too late.--That's a
+better shade, isn't it?"
+
+"Poor little Laura," said Miss Chapman, and drew a sigh. "Yes, I
+like that. Where did you say you were going to have the dress made?"
+
+Miss Snodgrass named, not without pride, one of the first warehouses in
+the city. "I've been saving up my screw for it, and I mean to have
+something decent this time. Besides, I know one of the men in the shop,
+and I'm going to make them do it cheap." And here they fell to
+discussing price and cut.
+
+Thus the onlookers laughed and quizzed and wondered; no one was bold
+enough to put an open question to Evelyn, and Evelyn did not offer to
+take anyone into her confidence. She held even hints and allusions at
+bay, with her honeyed laugh; which was HER shield against the world.
+Laura was the only person who ever got behind this laugh, and what she
+discovered there, she did not tell. As it was, varying motives were
+suggested for Evelyn's long-suffering, nobody being ready to believe
+that it could really be fondness, on her part, for the Byronic atom of
+humanity she had attracted to her.
+
+However that might be, the two girls, the big fair one and the little
+dark one, were, outside class-hours, seldom apart. Evelyn did not often,
+as in the case of the birdlike Lolo, give her young tyrant cause for
+offence; if she sometimes sought another's company, it was done in a
+roguish spirit--from a feminine desire to tease. Perhaps, too, she was
+at heart not averse to Laura's tantrums, or to testing her own power in
+quelling them. On the whole, though, she was very careful of her little
+friend's sensitive spots. She did not repeat the experiment of taking
+Laura out with her; as her stay at school drew to a close she went out
+less frequently herself; for the reason that, no matter how late
+it was on her getting back, she would find Laura obstinately sitting up
+in bed, wide-awake. And it went against the grain in her to keep the
+pale-faced girl from sleep.
+
+On such occasions, while she undid her pretty muslin dress, unpinned the
+flowers she was never without, and loosened her gold-brown hair, which
+she had put up for the evening: while she undressed, Evelyn had to
+submit to a rigorous cross-examination. Laura demanded to know where she
+had been, what she had done, whom she had spoken to; and woe to her if
+she tried to shirk a question. Laura was not only jealous, she was
+extraordinarily suspicious; and the elder girl had need of all her
+laughing kindness to steer her way through the shallows of distrust. For
+a great doubt of Evelyn's sincerity had implanted itself in Laura's
+mind: she could not forget the incident of the "mostly fools"; and,
+after an evening of this kind, she never felt quite sure that Evelyn was
+not deceiving her afresh out of sheer goodness of heart, of course--by
+assuring her that she had had a "horrid time", been bored to death, and
+would have much preferred to stay with her; when the truth was that, in
+the company of some moustached idiot or other, she had enjoyed herself
+to the top of her bent.
+
+On the night Laura learned that her friend had again met the
+loathly "Jim", there was a great to-do. In vain Evelyn laughed, reasoned,
+expostulated. Laura was inconsolable.
+
+"Look here, Poppet," said Evelyn at last, and was so much in earnest
+that she laid her hairbrush down, and took Laura by both her bony little
+shoulders. "Look here, you surely don't expect me to be an old
+maid, do you?--ME?" The pronoun signified all she might not say: it
+meant wealth, youth, beauty, and an unbounded capacity for pleasure.
+
+"Evvy, you're not going to MARRY that horrid man?"
+
+"Of course not, goosey. But that doesn't mean that I'm never going to
+marry at all, does it?"
+
+Laura supposed not--with a tremendous sniff.
+
+"Well, then, what IS all the fuss about?"
+
+It was not so easy to say. She was of course reconciled, she sobbed, to
+Evelyn marrying some day: only plain and stupid girls were left to be
+old maids: but it must not happen for years and years and years to come,
+and when it did, it must be to some one much older than herself, some
+one she did not greatly care for: in short, Evelyn was to marry only to
+escape the odium of the single life.
+
+Having drawn this sketch of her future word by word from the weeping
+Laura, Evelyn fell into a fit of laughter which she could not
+stifle. "Well, Poppet," she said when she could speak, "if that's your
+idea of happiness for me, we'll postpone it just as long as ever we can.
+I'm all there. For I mean to have a good time first--a jolly good time
+--before I tie myself up for ever, world without end, amen."
+
+"That's just what I hate so--your good time, as you call it," retorted
+Laura, smarting under the laughter.
+
+"Everyone does, child. You'll be after it yourself when you're a little
+older."
+
+"Me?--never!"
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed you will."
+
+"I won't. I hate men and I always shall. And oh, I thought"--
+with an upward, sobbing breath--"I thought you liked me best."
+
+"Of course I like you, you silly child! But that's altogether different.
+And I don't like you any less because I enjoy having some fun with them,
+too."
+
+"I don't want your old leavings!" said Laura savagely. It hurt, almost
+as much as having a tooth pulled out, did this knowledge that your
+friend's affection was wholly yours only as long as no man was in
+question. And out of the sting, Laura added: "Wait till I'm grown up, and
+I'll show them what I think of them--the pigs!"
+
+This time Evelyn had to hold her hand in front of her mouth. "No, no, I
+don't mean to laugh at you. Come, be good now," she petted. "And you
+really must go to bed, Laura. It's past twelve o'clock, and that
+infernal machine'll be going off before you've had any sleep at all."
+
+The "machine" was Laura's alarum, which ran down every night just now at
+two o'clock. For, if one thing was sure, it was that affairs with Laura
+were in a sorry muddle. In this, the last and most momentous year of her
+school life, at the close of which, like a steep wall to be scaled, rose
+the university examination, she was behindhand with her work, and
+occupied a mediocre place in her class. So steadfastly was her attention
+pitched on Evelyn that she could link it to nothing else: in the middle
+of an important task, her thoughts would stray to contemplate her friend
+or wonder what she was doing; while, if Evelyn were out for the evening,
+Laura gave up her meagre pretence of study altogether, and moodily
+propped her head in her hand. This was why she had hit on the
+small hours for the necessary cramming; then, there were no
+distractions: the great house was as still as an empty church; and
+Evelyn lay safe and sound before her. So, punctually at two o'clock
+Laura was startled, with a pounding heart, out of her first sleep; and
+lighting the gas she sat up in bed and pored over her books. Evelyn was
+not disturbed by the light, or at least she did not complain; and it was
+certainly a famous time for committing things to memory: the subsequent
+hours of sleep seemed rather to etch the facts into your brain than to
+blur them.
+
+You cannot however rob Peter to pay Paul, with impunity, and in the
+weeks that followed, despite her nightly industry, Laura made no
+headway.
+
+As the term tapered to an end, things went from bad to worse with her;
+and since, besides, the parting with Evelyn was at the door, she was
+often to be seen with red-rimmed eyelids, which she did not even try to
+conceal.
+
+"As if she'd lost her nearest relation!" laughed her school-fellows. And
+did they meet her privately, on the stairs or in a house-corridor, they
+crossed their hands on their breasts and turned up their eyes, in
+tragedy-fashion.
+
+Laura hardly saw them; for once in her life ridicule could not have her.
+The nearer the time drew, the more completely did the coming loss of
+Evelyn push other considerations into the background. It was bitter to
+reflect that her present dear friendship had no more strength to endure
+than the thin pretences of friendship she had hitherto played at. Evelyn
+and she would, no doubt, from time to time meet and take
+pleasure in each other again; but their homes lay hundreds of miles
+apart; and the intimacy of the schooldays was passing away, never to
+return. And no one could be held to blame for this. Evelyn's mother and
+father thought, rightly enough, that it was time for their daughter to
+leave school--but that was all. They did not really miss her, or need
+her. No, it was just a stupid, crushing piece of ill-luck, which
+happened one did not know why. The ready rebel in Laura sprang into
+being again; and she fought hard against the lesson that there are
+events in life--bitter, grim, and grotesque events--beneath which one
+can only bow one's head.--A further effect of the approaching
+separation was to bring home to her a sense of the fleetingness of
+things; she began to grasp that, everywhere and always, even while you
+revelled in them, things were perpetually rushing to a close; and the
+fact of them being things you loved, or enjoyed, was powerless to
+diminish the speed at which they escaped you.
+
+Of course, though, these were sensations rather than thoughts; and they
+did not hinder Laura from going on her knees to Evelyn, to implore her
+to remain. Day after day Evelyn kindly and patiently explained why this
+could not be; and if she sometimes drew a sigh at the child's
+persistence, it was too faint to be audible. Now Laura knew that it was
+possible to kill animal-pets by surfeiting them; and, towards the end, a
+suspicion dawned on her that you might perhaps damage feelings in the
+same way. It stood to reason: no matter how fond two people were of each
+other, the one who was about to emerge, like a butterfly from its
+sheath, could not be asked to regret her release; and, at
+moments--when Laura lay sobbing face downwards on her bed, or otherwise
+vented her pertinacious and disruly grief--at these moments she thought
+she scented a dash of relief in Evelyn, at the prospect of deliverance.
+
+But such delicate hints on the part of the hidden self are rarely able
+to gain a hearing; and, as the days dropped off one by one, like
+over-ripe fruit, Laura surrendered herself more and more blindly to her
+emotions. The consequence was, M. P.'s prediction came true: in the
+test-examinations which took place at midwinter, Laura, together with
+the few dunces of her class, was ignominiously plucked. And still
+staggering under this blow, she had to kiss Evelyn good-bye, and to set
+her face for home. 
+
+
+
+
+XXIV.
+
+
+
+WAS MICH NICHT UMBRINGT, MACHT MICH STARKER.
+
+NIETZSCHE
+
+
+Mother did not know or understand anything about "tests"; and Laura had
+no idea of enlightening her. She held her peace, and throughout the
+holidays hugged her disgraceful secret to her, untold. She had never
+before failed to pass an examination, having always lightly skimmed the
+surface of them on the wings of her parrot-like memory; hence, at home
+no one suspected that anything was amiss with her. The knowledge weighed
+the more heavily on her own mind. And, as if her other troubles were not
+enough, she was now beset by nervous fears about the future. She saw
+chiefly rocks ahead. If she did not succeed in getting through the final
+examination in summer, she would not be allowed to present herself for
+matriculation, and, did this happen, there would be the very devil to
+pay. All her schooling would, in Mother's eyes, have been for naught.
+For Mother was one of those people who laid tremendous weight on prizes
+and examinations, as offering a tangible proof that your time had not
+been wasted or misspent. Besides this, she could not afford in the event
+of a failure, to pay the school-fees for another year. The money which,
+by hook and by crook, had been scraped together and hoarded up for
+Laura's education was now coming to an end; as it was, the next six
+months would mean a terrible pinching and screwing. The other
+children, too, were growing day by day more costly; their little minds
+and bodies clamoured for a larger share of attention. And Laura's eyes
+were rudely opened to the struggle Mother had had to make both ends
+meet, while her first-born was acquiring wisdom; for Mother spoke of it
+herself, spoke openly of her means and resources, perhaps with some idea
+of rousing in Laura a gratitude that had so far been dormant.
+
+If this was her intention she failed. Laura was much too fast entangled
+in her own troubles, to have leisure for such a costly feeling as
+gratitude; and Mother's outspokenness only added a fresh weight to her
+pack. It seemed as if everybody and everything were ranged against her;
+and guilty, careworn, lonely, she shrank into her shell. About school
+affairs she again kept her lips shut, enduring, like a stubborn martyr,
+the epithets "close" and "deceitful" this reticence earned her. Her time
+was spent in writing endless, scrawly letters to Evelyn, which covered
+days; in sitting moodily at the top of the fir tree which she climbed in
+defiance of her length of petticoat glaring at sunsets, and brooding on
+dead delights; in taking long, solitary, evening walks, by choice on the
+heel of a thunderstorm, when the red earth was riddled by creeklets of
+running water; till Mother, haunted by a lively fear of encounters
+with "swags" or Chinamen, put her foot down and forbade them.
+
+Sufferers are seldom sweet-tempered; and Laura formed no exception. Pin,
+her most frequent companion, had to bear the brunt of her acrimony:
+hence the two were soon at war again. For Pin was tactless, and
+took small heed of her sister's grumpy moods, save to cavil at them.
+Laura's buttoned-upness, for instance, and her love of solitude, were
+perverse leanings to Pin's mind; and she spoke out against them with the
+assurance of one who has public opinion at his back. Laura retaliated by
+falling foul of little personal traits in Pin: a nervous habit she had
+of clearing her throat--her very walk. They quarrelled passionately,
+having branched as far apart as the end-points of what is ultimately to
+be a triangle, between which the connecting lines have not yet been
+drawn.
+
+Sometimes they even came to blows.
+
+"I'll fetch your ma to you--that I will!" threatened Sarah, called by
+the noise of the scuffle. "Great girls like you--fightin' like
+bandicoots! You ought to be downright ashamed o' yourselves."
+
+"I don't know what's come over you two, I'm sure," scolded Mother, when
+the combatants had been parted and brought before her in the kitchen,
+where she was rolling pastry. "You never used to go on like this.--Pin,
+stop that noise. Do you want to deafen me?"
+
+"She hit me first," sobbed Pin. "It's always Laura who begins."
+
+"I'll teach her to cheek me like that!"
+
+"Well, all I can say is," said Mother exasperated, and pushed a lock of
+hair off her perspiring forehead with the back of her hand. "All I say
+is, big girls as you are, you deserve to have the nonsense whipped out
+of you.--As for you, Laura, if this is your only return for all the
+money I've spent on you, then I wish from my heart you'd never seen the
+inside of that Melbourne school."
+
+"How pretty your eyes look, mother, when your eyelashes get floury!"
+said Laura, struck by the vivid contrast of black and white. She merely
+stated the fact, without intent to flatter, her anger being given to
+puffing out as suddenly as it kindled.
+
+"Oh, get along with you!" said Mother, at the same time skilfully
+lifting and turning a large, thin sheet of paste. "You can't get round
+ME like that."
+
+"You used to have nice, ladylike manners," she said on another occasion,
+when Laura, summoned to the drawingroom to see a visitor, had in
+Mother's eyes disgraced them both. "Now, you've no more idea how to
+behave than a country bumpkin. You sit there, like a stock or a stone,
+as if you didn't know how to open your mouth."--Mother was very cross.
+
+"I didn't want to see that old frump anyhow," retorted Laura, who
+inclined to charge the inhabitants of the township with an extreme
+provinciality. "And what else was there to say, but yes or no? She asked
+me all things I didn't know anything about. You don't want me to tell
+stories, I suppose?"
+
+"Well, if a child of mine doesn't know the difference between being
+polite and telling stories," said Mother, completely outraged, "then, all
+I can say is, it's a . . . a great shame!" she wound up lamely, after
+the fashion of hot-tempered people who begin a sentence without being
+clear how they are going to end it.--"You were a nice enough child once.
+If only I'd never let you leave home."
+
+This jeremiad was repeated by Mother and chorused by the rest till Laura
+grew incensed. She was roused to defend her present self, at the cost of
+her past perfections; and this gave rise to new dissensions.
+
+So that in spite of what she had to face at school, she was not
+altogether sorry, when the time came, to turn her back on her unknowing
+and hence unsympathetic relations. She journeyed to Melbourne on one of
+those pleasant winter days when the sun shines from morning till night
+in a cloudless sky, and the chief mark of the season is the
+extraordinary greenness of the grass; returned a pale, determined, lanky
+girl, full of the grimmest resolutions.
+
+The first few days were like a bad dream. The absence of Evelyn came
+home to her in all its crushing force. A gap yawned drearily where
+Evelyn had been--but then, she had been everywhere. There was now a
+kind of emptiness about the great school--except for memories, which
+cropped up at each turn. Laura was in a strange room, with strange,
+indifferent girls; and for a time she felt as lonely as she had done in
+those unthinkable days when she was still the poor little green "new
+chum".
+
+Her companions were not wilfully unkind to her--her last extravagance
+had been foolish, not criminal--and two or three were even sorry for
+the woebegone figure she cut. But her idolatrous attachment to Evelyn
+had been the means of again drawing round her one of those magic
+circles, which held her schoolfellows at a distance. And the aroma of
+her eccentricity still clung to her. The members of her class were deep
+in study, too; little was now thought or spoken of but the approaching
+examinations. And her first grief over, Laura set her teeth and flung
+herself on her lessons like a dog on a bone, endeavouring to
+pack the conscientious work of twelve months into less than six.
+
+The days were feverish with energy. But at night the loneliness
+returned, and was only the more intense because, for some hours on end,
+she had been able to forget it.
+
+On one such night when she lay wakeful, haunted by the prospect of
+failure, she turned over the leaves of her Bible--she had been
+memorising her weekly portion--and read, not as a school-task, but for
+herself. By chance she lighted on the Fourteenth Chapter of St John, and
+the familiar, honey-sweet words fell on her heart like caresses. Her
+tears flowed; both at the beauty of the language and out of pity for
+herself; and before she closed the Book, she knew that she had found a
+well of comfort that would never run dry.
+
+In spite of a certain flabbiness in its outward expression, deep down in
+Laura the supreme faith of childhood still dwelt intact: she believed,
+with her whole heart, in the existence of an all-knowing God, and just
+as implicitly in His perfect power to succour His human children at
+will. But thus far on her way she had not greatly needed Him: at the
+most, she had had recourse to Him for forgiveness of sin. Now, however,
+the sudden withdrawal of a warm, human sympathy seemed to open up a new
+use for Him. An aching void was in her and about her; it was for Him to
+fill this void with the riches of His love.--And she comforted herself
+for her previous lack of warmth, by the reminder that His need also was
+chiefly of the heavy-laden and oppressed.
+
+In the spurt of intense religious fervour that now set in for
+her, it was to Christ she turned by preference, rather than to the
+remoter God the Father. For of the latter she carried a kind of
+Michelangelesque picture in her brain: that of an old, old man with a
+flowing grey beard, who sat, Turk-fashion, one hand plucking at this
+beard, the other lying negligently across His knees. Christ, on the
+contrary, was a young man, kindly of face, and full of tender
+invitation.
+
+To this younger, tenderer God, she proffered long and glowing prayers,
+which vied with one another in devoutness. Soon she felt herself led by
+Him, felt herself a favourite lying on His breast; and, as the days went
+by, her ardour so increased that she could not longer consume the smoke
+of her own fire: it overspread her daily life--to the renewed
+embarrassment of her schoolfellows. Was it then impossible, they asked
+themselves, for Laura Rambotham to do anything in a decorous and
+ladylike way. Must she at every step put them out of countenance? It was
+not respectable to be so fervent. Religion, felt they, should be
+practised with modesty; be worn like an indispensable but private
+garment. Whereas she committed the gross error in taste of, as it were,
+parading it outside her other clothes.
+
+Laura, her thoughts turned heavenwards, did not look low enough to
+detect the distaste in her comrades' eyes. The farther she spun herself
+into her intimacy with the Deity, the more indifferent did she grow to
+the people and things of this world.
+
+Weeks passed. Her feelings, in the beginning a mere blissful certainty
+that God was Love and she was God's, ceased to be wholly
+passive. Thus, her first satisfaction at her supposed election was soon
+ousted by self-righteousness, did she contemplate her unremitting
+devotion. And one night, when her own eloquence at prayer had brought
+the moisture to her eyes--one night the inspiration fell. Throughout
+these weeks, she had faithfully worshipped God without asking so much as
+a pin's head from Him in return; she had given freely; all she had, had
+been His. Now the time had surely come when she might claim to be
+rewarded. Now it was for Him to show that He had appreciated her homage.
+--Oh, it was so easy a thing for Him to help her, if He would . . . if
+He only would!
+
+Pressing her fingers to her eyeballs till the starry blindness was
+effected that induces ecstasy, she prostrated herself before the
+mercy-seat, not omitting, at this crisis, to conciliate the Almighty by
+laying stress on her own exceeding unworthiness.
+
+"Oh, dear Lord Jesus, have mercy upon me, miserable sinner! Oh, Christ,
+I ask Thy humble pardon! For I have been weak, Lord, and have forgotten
+to serve Thy Holy Name. My thoughts have erred and strayed like . . .
+like lost sheep. But loved Thee, Jesus, all the time, my heart seemed
+full as it would hold . . . no, I didn't mean to say that. But I was not
+ever thus, nor prayed that Thou shouldst lead me on. But now, dear
+Jesus, if Thou wilt only grant me my desire, I will never forget Thee or
+be false to Thee again. I will love Thee and serve Thee, all the days of
+my life, till death us do . . . I mean, only let me pass my
+examinations, Lord, and there is nothing I will not do for Thee in
+return. Oh, dear Lord Jesus, Son of Mary, hear my prayer, and I
+will worship Thee and adore Thee, and never forget Thee, and that Thou
+hast died to save me! Grant me this my prayer, Lord, for Christ's sake,
+Amen."
+
+It came to this: Laura made a kind of pact with God, in which His aid at
+the present juncture guaranteed her continued, unswerving allegiance.
+
+The idea once lodged in her mind, she wrestled with Him night after
+night, filling His ears with her petitions, and remaining on her knees
+for such an immoderate length of time that her room-mates, who were
+sleepy, openly expressed their impatience.
+
+"Oh, draw it mild, Laura!" said the girl in the neighbouring bed, when
+it began to seem as if the supplicant would never rise to her feet
+again. "Leave something to ask Him to-morrow."
+
+But Laura, knowing very well that the Lord our God is a jealous God, was
+mindful not to scrimp in lip-service, or to shirk the minutest ceremony
+by means of which He might be propitiated and won over. Her prayers of
+greeting and farewell, on entering and leaving church, were drawn out
+beyond anyone else's; she did not doze or dream over a single clause of
+the Litany, with its hypnotising refrain; and she not only made the sign
+of the Cross at the appropriate place in the Creed, but also privately
+at every mention of Christ's name.
+
+Meanwhile, of course, she worked at her lessons with unflagging zeal,
+for it was by no means her intention to throw the whole onus of her
+success on the Divine shoulders. She overworked; and on one occasion had
+a distressing lapse of memory.
+
+And at length spring was gone and summer come, and the momentous
+week arrived on which her future depended. Now, though, she was not
+alone in her trepidation. The eyes of even the surest members of the
+form had a steely glint in them, and mouths were hard. Dr. Pughson's
+papers were said to be far more formidable than the public examination:
+if you got happily through these, you were safe.
+
+Six subjects were compulsory; high-steppers took nine. Laura was one of
+those with eight, and since her two obligatory mathematics were not to
+be relied on, she could not afford to fail in a single subject.
+
+In the beginning, things, with the exception of numbers, went pretty
+well with her. Then came the final day, and with it the examination in
+history. Up to the present year Laura had cut a dash in history; now her
+brain was muddled, her memory overtaxed, by her having had to cram the
+whole of Green's HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE in a few months, besides
+a large dose of GREECE and ROME. Reports ran of the exceptionally
+"catchy" nature of Dr Pughson's questions; and Laura's prayer, the night
+before, was more like a threat than a supplication. The class had only
+just entered the Headmaster's room on the eventful morning, and begun to
+choose desks, when there came a summons to Laura to take a music-lesson.
+This was outside consideration, and Dr Pughson made short work of the
+intruder--a red-haired little girl, who blushed meekly and
+unbecomingly, and withdrew. Here, however, Laura rose and declared that,
+under these circumstances, some explanation was due to Monsieur Boehmer,
+the music-master, to-day's lesson being in fact a rehearsal for the
+annual concert.
+
+Dr Pughson raised his red-rimmed eyes from his desk and looked
+very fierce.
+
+"Tch, tch, tch!" he snapped, in the genial Irish fashion that made him
+dreaded and adored. "How like a woman that is! Playing at concerts when
+she can't add two and two together!--Your arithmetic paper's fit for
+PUNCH, Miss Rambotham."
+
+The smile he looked for went round.
+
+"Have you seen the questions?--no? Well, give them here then. You've
+got to go, I suppose, or we might deprive the concert of your shining
+light.--Hurry back, now. Stir your stumps!"
+
+But this Laura had no intention of doing. In handling the printed slip,
+her lagging eye had caught the last and most vital question: "Give a full
+account of Oliver Cromwell's Foreign Policy."--And she did not know it!
+She dragged out her interview with the music-master, put questions wide
+of the point, insisted on lingering till he had arranged another hour
+for the postponed rehearsal; and, as she walked, as she talked, as she
+listened to Monsieur Boehmer's ridiculous English, she strove in vain to
+recall jot or tittle of Oliver's relations to foreign powers.--Oh, for
+just a peep at the particular page of Green! For, if once she got her
+cue, she believed she could go on.
+
+The dining-hall was empty when she went through it on her way back to
+the classroom: her history looked lovingly at her from its place on the
+shelf. But she did not dare to go over to it, take it out, and turn up
+the passage: that was too risky. What she did do, however, when she had
+almost reached the door, was to dash back, pull out a synopsis--[P.262]
+a slender, medium-sized volume--and hastily and clumsily button this
+inside the bodice of her dress. The square, board-like appearance it
+gave her figure, where it projected beyond the sides of her apron, she
+concealed by hunching her shoulders.
+
+Her lightning plan was, to enter a cloakroom, snatch a hurried peep at
+Oliver's confounded policy, then hide the book somewhere till the
+examination was over. But on emerging from the dining-hall she all but
+collided with the secretary, who had come noiselessly across the
+verandah; and she was so overcome by the thought of the danger she had
+run, and by Miss Blount's extreme surprise at Dr Pughson's leniency,
+that she allowed herself to be driven back to the examination-room
+without a word.
+
+The girls were hard at it; they scarcely glanced up when she opened the
+door. From her friends' looks, she could judge of the success they were
+having. Cupid, for instance, was smirking to herself in the peculiar
+fashion that meant satisfaction; M. P.'s cheeks were the colour of
+monthly roses. And soon Laura, crouching low to cover her deformity, was
+at work like the rest.
+
+Had only Oliver Cromwell never been born!--thus she reflected, when she
+had got the easier part of the paper behind her. Why could it not have
+been a question about Bourke and Wills, or the Eureka Stockade, or the
+voyages of Captain Cook? . . . something about one's own country, that
+one had heard hundreds of times and was really interested in. Or a big,
+arresting thing like the Retreat of the Ten Thousand, or Hannibal's
+March over the Alps? Who cared for old Oliver, and his shorn head, and
+his contempt for baubles! What did it matter now to anyone what
+his attitude had been, more than two hundred years ago, to all those
+far-away, dream-like countries? . . . Desperately she pressed her hand
+to her eyes. She knew the very page of Green on which Cromwell's foreign
+relations were set forth; knew where the paragraph began, near the foot
+of the page: what she could not get hold of was the opening sentence
+that would have set her mechanical memory a-rolling.
+
+The two hours drew steadily to a close. About half an hour beforehand
+the weakest candidates began to rise, to hand in their papers and leave
+the room; but it was not till ten minutes to twelve that the "crack"
+girls stopped writing. Laura was to be allowed an extra twenty minutes,
+and it was on this she relied. At last, she was alone with the master.
+But though he was already dipping into the examination-papers, he was
+not safe. She had unbuttoned two buttons and was at a third, when he
+looked up so unexpectedly that she was scared out of her senses, and
+fastened her dress again with all the haste she could. Three or four of
+the precious minutes were lost.
+
+At this point, the door opened and Mr. Strachey strode into the room. Dr
+Pughson blinked up from the stacks of papers, rose, and the two spoke in
+low tones. Then, with a glance at Laura, they went together to the door,
+which Dr Pughson held to behind him, and stood just over the threshold.
+As they warmed to their talk, the master let the door slip into the
+latch.
+
+Laura could see them from where she sat, without being seen. A moment
+later they moved stealthily away, going down the verandah in the
+direction of the office.
+
+Now for it! With palsied hands she undid her bodice, clutched at the
+book, forced her blurred eyes to find the page, and ran them over it. A
+brief survey: five or six heads to remember: a few dates. Flapped to
+again; tucked under her apron; shoved into her bosom.
+
+And not a second too soon. There he came, hurrying back. And three
+buttons were still undone. But Laura's head was bent over her desk:
+though her heart was pummelling her ribs, her pen now ran like
+lightning; and by the time the order to stop was given, she had covered
+the requisite number of sheets. Afterwards she had adroitly to rid
+herself of the book, then to take part--a rather pale-eyed, distracted
+part--in the lively technical discussions that ensued; when each
+candidate was as long-winded on the theme of her success, or
+non-success, as a card-player on his hand at the end of a round.
+Directly she could make good her escape, she pleaded a headache, climbed
+to her bedroom and stretched herself flat on her bed. She was through--
+but at what a cost! She felt quite sore. Her very bones seemed to hurt
+her.
+
+Not till she was thoroughly rested, and till she had assured herself
+that all risk attaching to the incident was over, did she come to
+reflect on the part God had played in the business. And then, it must be
+admitted, she found it a sorry one. Just at first, indeed, her limpid
+faith was shocked into a reluctance to believe that He had helped her at
+all: His manner of doing it would have been so inexpressibly mean. But,
+little by little, she dug deeper, and eventually she reached the [P.265]
+conclusion that He had given her the option of this way, throwing it
+open to her and then standing back and watching to see what she would
+do, without so much as raising an eyelid to influence her decision. In
+fact, the more she pondered over it, the more inclined she grew to think
+that it had been a kind of snare on the part of God, to trap her afresh
+into sin, and thus to prolong her dependence on Him after her crying
+need was past. But, if this were true, if He had done this, then He must
+LIKE people to remain miserable sinners, so that He might have them
+always crawling to His feet. And from this view of the case her
+ingenuous young mind shrank appalled. She could not go on loving and
+worshipping a God who was capable of double dealing; who could behave in
+such a "mean, Jewy fashion". Nor would she ever forget His having forced
+her to endure the moments of torture she had come through that day.
+
+Lying on her bed, she grappled with these thoughts. A feeling of deep
+resentment was their abiding result. Whatever His aim, it had been past
+expression pitiless of Him, Him who had at His command thousands of
+pleasanter ways in which to help her, thus to drive a poor unhappy girl
+to extremities: one, too, whose petition had not been prompted by
+selfish ends alone. What she had implored of Him touched Mother even
+more nearly than herself: her part prayer to Him had been to save Mother
+--whose happiness depended on things like examinations--from a bitter
+disappointment. That much at least He had done--she would give Him His
+due--but at the expense of her entire self-respect. Oh, He must have a
+cold, calculating heart . . . could one only see right down into
+it. The tale of His clemency and compassion, which the Bible told, was
+not to be interpreted literally: when one came to think of it, had He
+ever--outside the Bible--been known to stoop from His judgment-seat,
+and lovingly and kindly intervene? It was her own absurd mistake: she
+had taken the promises made through His Son, for gospel truth; had
+thought He really meant what He said, about rewarding those who were
+faithful to Him. Her companions--the companions on whom, from the
+heights of her piety, she had looked pityingly down--were wiser than
+she. They did not abase themselves before Him, and vow a lifelong
+devotion; but neither did they make any but the most approved demands on
+Him. They satisfied their consciences by paying Him lip-homage, by
+confessing their sins, and by asking for a vague, far-distant mercy, to
+which they attached no great importance. Hence, they never came into
+fierce personal conflict with Him. Nor would she, ever again; from this
+time forward, she would rival the rest in lukewarmness.--But, before
+she could put this resolve into force, she had to let her first
+indignation subside: only then was it possible for her to recover the
+shattering of her faith, and settle down to practise religion after the
+glib and shallow mode of her friends. She did not, however, say her
+prayers that night, or for many a right to come; and when, at church,
+Christ's name occurred in the Service, she held her head erect, and shut
+the ears and eyes of her soul. 
+
+
+
+
+XXV.
+
+
+
+IHR LERNTET ALLE NICHT TANZEN, WIE MAN TANZEN MUSS--UBER EUCH HINWEG
+TANZEN!
+
+NIETZSCHE
+
+
+The school year had ebbed; the ceremonies that attended its conclusion
+were over. A few days beforehand, the fifth-form boarders, under the
+tutelage of a couple of governesses, drove off early in the morning to
+the distant university. On the outward journey the candidates were
+thoughtful and subdued; but as they returned home, in the late
+afternoon, their spirits were not to be kept within seemly bounds. They
+laughed, sang, and rollicked about inside the wagonette, Miss Zielinski
+weakly protesting unheard--were so rowdy that the driver pushed his
+cigar-stump to the corner of his mouth, to be able to smile at ease, and
+flicked his old horse into a canter. For the public examination had
+proved as anticipated, child's play, compared with what the class had
+been through at Dr Pughson's hands; and its accompanying details were of
+an agreeable nature: the weather was not too hot; the examination-hall
+was light and airy; through the flung-back windows trees and flowering
+shrubs looked in; the students were watched over by a handsome Trinity
+man, who laid his straw hat on the desk before him.
+
+Then came the annual concert, at which none of the performers broke
+down; Speech Day, when the body of a big hall was crowded with relatives
+and friends, and when so many white, blue-beribboned frocks were
+massed together on the platform, that this looked like a great bed of
+blue and white flowers; and, finally, trunks were brought out from
+boxrooms and strewn through the floors, and upper-form girls emptied
+cupboards and drawers into them for the last time.
+
+On the evening before the general dispersion, Laura, Cupid, and M. P.
+walked the well-known paths of the garden once again. While the two
+elder girls were more loquacious than their wont, Laura was quieter. She
+had never wholly recovered her humour since the day of the
+history-examination; and she still could not look back, with composure,
+on the jeopardy in which she had placed herself one little turn of the
+wheel in the wrong direction, and the end of her schooldays would have
+been shame and disgrace.--And just as her discovery of God's stratagem
+had damped her religious ardour, so her antipathy to the means she had
+been obliged to employ had left a feeling of enmity in her, towards the
+school and everything connected with it: she had counted the hours till
+she could turn her back on it altogether. None the less, now that the
+time had come there was a kind of ache in her at having to say good-bye;
+for it was in her nature to let go unwillingly of things, places and
+people once known. Besides, glad as she felt to have done with learning,
+she was unclear what was to come next. The idea of life at home
+attracted her as little as ever--Mother had even begun to hint as well
+that she would now be expected to instruct her young brothers. Hence,
+her parting was effected with very mixed feelings; she did not know in
+the least where she really belonged, or under what conditions
+she would be happy; she was conscious only of a mild sorrow at having to
+take leave of the shelter of years.
+
+Her two companions had no such doubts and regrets; for them the past was
+already dead and gone; their talk was all of the future, so soon to
+become the present. They forecast this, mapping it out for themselves
+with the iron belief in their power to do so, which is the hall-mark of
+youth.
+
+Laura, walking at their side, listened to their words with the deepest
+interest, and with the reverence she had learned to extend to all
+opinions save her own.
+
+M. P. proposed to return to Melbourne at the end of the vacation; for
+she was going on to Trinity, where she intended to take one degree after
+another. She hesitated only whether it was to be in medicine or arts.
+
+"Oogh! . . . to cut off people's legs!" ejaculated Laura. "M. P., how
+awful."
+
+"Oh, one soon gets used to that, child.--But I think, on the whole, I
+should prefer to take up teaching. Then I shall probably be able to have
+a school of my own some day."
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if you got Sandy's place here," said Laura, who was
+assured that M. P.'s massy intellect would open all doors.
+
+"Who knows?" answered Mary, and set her lips in a determined fashion of
+her own. "Stranger things have happened."
+
+Cupid, less enamoured of continual discipline, intended to be a
+writer. "My cousin says I've got the stuff in me. And he's a journalist
+and ought to know."
+
+"I should rather think he ought."
+
+"Well, I mean to have a shot at it."
+
+"And you, Laura?" M. P. asked suavely.
+
+"Me?--Oh, goodness knows!"
+
+"Close as usual, Infant."
+
+"No, really not, Cupid."
+
+"Well, you'll soon have to make up your mind to something now. You're
+nearly sixteen.--Why not go on working for your B.A.?"
+
+"No thanks! I've had enough of that here." And Laura's thoughts waved
+their hands, as it were, to the receding figure of Oliver Cromwell.
+
+"Be a teacher, then."
+
+"M.P.! I never want to hear a date or add up a column of figures again."
+
+"Laura!"
+
+"It's the solemn truth. I'm fed up with all those blessed things."
+
+"Fancy not having a single wish!"
+
+"Wish? . . . oh, I've tons of wishes. First I want to be with Evvy
+again. And then, I want to see things--yes, that most of all. Hundreds
+and thousands of things. People, and places, and what they eat, and how
+they dress, and China, and Japan . . . just tons."
+
+"You'll have to hook a millionaire for that, my dear."
+
+"And perhaps you'll write a book about your travels for us
+stay-at-homes."
+
+"Gracious! I shouldn't know how to begin. But you'll send me all you
+write--all YOUR books--won't you, Cupid? And, M. P., you'll let me
+come and see you get your degrees--every single one."
+
+With these and similar promises the three girls parted. They
+never met again. For a time they exchanged letters regularly,
+many-sheeted letters, full of familiar, personal detail. Then the detail
+ceased, the pages grew fewer in number, the time-gap longer. Letters in
+turn gave place to mere notes and postcards, scribbled in violent haste,
+at wide intervals. And ultimately even these ceased; and the great
+silence of separation was unbroken. Nor were the promises redeemed:
+there came to Laura neither gifts of books nor calls to be present at
+academic robings. Within six months of leaving school, M. P. married and
+settled down in her native township; and thereafter she was forced to
+adjust the rate of her progress to the steps of halting little feet.
+Cupid went a-governessing, and spent the best years of her life in the
+obscurity of the bush.
+
+And Laura? . . . In Laura's case, no kindly Atropos snipped the thread
+of her aspirations: these, large, vague, extemporary, one and all
+achieved fulfilment; then withered off to make room for more. But this,
+the future still securely hid from her. She went out from school with
+the uncomfortable sense of being a square peg, which fitted into none of
+the round holes of her world; the wisdom she had got, the experience she
+was richer by, had, in the process of equipping her for life, merely
+seemed to disclose her unfitness. She could not then know that, even for
+the squarest peg, the right hole may ultimately be found; seeming
+unfitness prove to be only another aspect of a peculiar and special
+fitness. But, of the after years, and what they brought her, it is not
+the purport of this little book to tell. It is enough to say: many a
+day came and went before she grasped that, oftentimes, just
+those mortals who feel cramped and unsure in the conduct of everyday
+life, will find themselves to rights, with astounding ease, in that
+freer, more spacious world where no practical considerations hamper, and
+where the creatures that inhabit dance to their tune: the world where
+are stored up men's best thoughts, the hopes, and fancies; where the
+shadow is the substance, and the multitude of business pales before the
+dream. 
+
+In the meantime, however, the exodus of the fifty-five turned the
+College upside-down.
+
+Early the following morning Laura made her final preparations for
+departure. This, alas! was not to be on so imposing a scale as the
+departures of her schoolfellows. They, under special escort, would have
+a cab apiece, and would drive off with flying handkerchiefs and all
+their luggage piled high in front. Whereas Laura's box had gone by van:
+for she and Pin, who was in Melbourne on a visit, were to spend a couple
+of days at Godmother's before starting up-country. Even her farewells,
+which she had often rehearsed to herself with dramatic emphasis, went
+off without eclat. Except for Miss Chapman, the governesses were absent
+when the moment came, and Miss Chapman's mind was so full of other
+things that she went on giving orders while she was shaking hands.
+
+But Laura was not destined to leave the walls, within the shadow of
+which she had learned so much, as tamely as all this. There was still a
+surprise in waiting for her. As she whisked about the corridors in
+search of Mrs. Gurley, she met two girls, one of whom said: "I
+say, Laura Rambotham, you're fetched. Your pretty sister's come for
+you."
+
+"My . . . who?" gaped Laura.
+
+"Your sister. By gum, there's a nose for you--and those whopping eyes!
+You'll have to play second fiddle to THAT, all your days, my dear."
+
+On entering the reception-room Laura tried hard to see Pin with the eyes
+of a stranger. Pin rose from her chair--awkwardly, of course, for there
+were other people present, and Laura's violent stare was disconcerting
+in the extreme: it made Pin believe her hat was crooked, or that she had
+a black speck on her nose. As for Laura, she could see no great change
+in her sister; the freckles were certainly paler, and the features were
+perhaps beginning to emerge a little, from the cushiony fat in which
+they were bedded; but that was all. Still, if outsiders, girls in
+particular, were struck by it . . .
+
+A keener stab than this--really, she did not grudge Pin being pretty:
+it was only the newness of the thing that hurt--a keener stab was it
+that, though she had ordered Pin repeatedly, and with all the stress she
+was master of, to come in a wagonette to fetch her, so that she might at
+least drive away like the other girls; in spite of this, the little
+nincompoop had after all arrived on foot. Godmother had said the idea of
+driving was stuff and nonsense--a quite unnecessary expense. Pin, of
+course, had meekly given in; and thus Laura's last brave attempt to be
+comfortably like her companions came to naught. She went out of the
+school in the same odd and undignified fashion in which she had lived
+there.
+
+The wrangle caused by Pin's chicken-heartedness lasted the
+sisters down the garden-path, across the road, and over into the
+precincts of a large, public park. Only when they were some distance
+through this, did Laura wake to what was happening to her. Then, it came
+over her with a rush: she was free, absolutely free; she might do any
+mortal thing she chose.
+
+As a beginning she stopped short.
+
+"Hold on, Pin . . . take this," she said, giving her sister the heavy
+leather bag they were carrying in turns to the tramway. Pin obediently
+held out her hand, in its little white cotton glove.
+
+"And my hat."
+
+"What are you going to do, Laura?"
+
+"You'll see."
+
+"You'll get sunstroke!"
+
+"Fiddles!--it's quite shady. Here're my gloves.--Now, Pin, you follow
+your nose and you'll find me--WHERE you find me!"
+
+"Oh, what ARE you going to do, Laura?" cried Pin, in anxiety.
+
+"I'm going to have a good run," said Laura; and tightened her
+hair-ribbon.
+
+"Oh, but you can't run in the street! You're too big. People'll see
+you."
+
+"Think I care?--If you'd been years only doing what you were allowed
+to, I guess you'd want to do something you weren't allowed to, too.--
+Good-bye!"
+
+She was off, had darted away into the leaden heat of the December
+morning, like an arrow from its bow, her head bent, her arms
+close to her sides, fleet-footed as a spaniel: Pin was faced by the
+swift and rhythmic upturning of her heels. There were not many people
+abroad at this early hour, but the few there were, stood still and
+looked in amazement after the half-grown girl in white, whose thick
+black plait of hair sawed up and down as she ran; and a man with mop and
+bucket, who was washing statues, stopped his work and whistled, and
+winked at Pin as she passed.
+
+Cross and confused Pin trudged after her sister, Laura's hat and gloves
+in one hand, the leather bag in the other.
+
+Right down the central avenue ran Laura, growing smaller and smaller in
+the distance, the area of her movements decreasing as she ran, till she
+appeared to be almost motionless, and not much larger than a figure in
+the background of a picture. Then came a sudden bend in the long,
+straight path. She shot round it, and was lost to sight. 
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Getting of Wisdom
+by Henry Handel Richardson
+
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