girls who live along this road have taken up typewriting, or County Council cookery, or teaching—things that will give them independence. I have nothing of the sort to fall back upon. I might take care of little children, perhaps, but people like Norland nurses at a hundred a year nowadays. Or I might find a post as a lady's maid——" [Pg 42] "What?" "Well, you taught me to pack and to mend lace, Auntie! And I can do hair—it's the only natural gift I've got," I said. "Perhaps I might get them to give me a chance in some small hairdresser's to begin with." "You are talking nonsense, and you do not even mean what you say, child." "I mean every word of it, and I don't see why it should be nonsense," I persisted. "It isn't, when these other girls talk of making a career for themselves somehow. They can get on——" "They are not ladies." "It's a deadly handicap being what our family calls a lady," said I. "I'm going to stop being one and to have something like a life of my own at last." [Pg 43] "I forbid you," said Aunt Anastasia, in her stoniest voice, "I forbid you to do anything that is unbefitting my niece, my brother's child, and Lady Anastasia's great-granddaughter!" [Pg 43] "Auntie, I am past twenty-one," I said quite quietly. "No one can 'forbid' my doing anything that is within the law! And I'm going to take the rest of my life into my own hands." [Pg 44] [Pg 44] CHAPTER VII MY DEPARTURE I have been putting on all my outdoor things. I have For I feel desperate.
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