firmed. And I knew they just had the habit of opposition. But of course it was awful. I’m not saying that it wasn’t. And I was so sick of it. But I had learned they couldn’t do anything to me. I remember how wonderful it was when I discovered that they could not put me down the well in a sack, or lock me up in a cupboard, or things like that; that all they could do was just talk. And my dear old governess had taught me a wonderful thing when I was a little child, when Daphne and Rose used to pester me. You know that silly little jingle, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me’? I can see her now as she said it, dear old thing. And I learned the philosophy in that old jingle, and it was a grand weapon. Of course I had ceased to be a lady so often that the word came to mean nothing. What I found was that I was still myself, with my own loves and hates, no matter what they called me. Goodness! I am rambling. Does this bore you? You see it’s wonderful to have someone to talk to.”
She peered into his face. He saw she was excited.
“I was just thinking how fine it was to hear someone really talk again. Go on. You are not boring me at all.”
“Of course I know now that it was just as hard on them, poor things, as it was on me. I must have been a horrid little brute from their point of view. But I seemed so right to myself. It’s funny how harmless we seem to ourselves, isn’t it? And the governess thought I was right, and dad kept telling me to go ahead. Well, to come back to the cigarettes. Smoking seemed funny to me, just a lark, not to be compared with telling tales and doing sneaky things. But the dear relatives thought otherwise. So mother got her moral props, the Elegancies, old mummies that they were then, Aunt Maud, whom I particularly hated, and a brother and a sister. The idea was, I sup
