ahead and
after a short space, disaster, she must get along.

The peaceful Dutch fields came to her mind. They looked so secure. They
had passed by too soon. We have always been in a false position, she
pondered. Always lying and pretending and keeping up a show--never
daring to tell anybody.... Did she want to tell anybody? To come out
into the open and be helped and have things arranged for her and do
things like other people? No.... No.... "Miriam always likes to be
different"--"Society is no boon to those not sociable." Dreadful
things... and the girls laughing together about them. What did they
really mean?

"Society is no boon to those not sociable"--on her birthday-page in
Ellen Sharpe's birthday-book. Ellen handed it to her going upstairs and
had chanted the words out to the others and smiled her smile... she had
not asked her to write her name... was it unsociable to dislike so
many of the girls.... Ellen's people were in the Indian... her thoughts
hesitated.... Sivvle... something grand--All the grand girls were
horrid... somehow mean and sly... Sivvle... _Sivvle_ ... _Civil!_ Of
course! Civil _what?_

Miriam groaned. She was a governess now. Someone would ask her that
question. She would ask Pater before he went.... No, she would not. ...
If only he would answer a question simply, and not with a superior air
as if he had invented the thing he was telling about. She felt she had
a right to all the knowledge there was, without fuss... oh, without
fuss--without fuss and--emotion.... I _am_ unsociable, I suppose--she
mused. She could not think of anyone who did not offend her. I don't
like men and I loathe women. I am a misanthrope. So's Pater. He despises
women and can't get on with men. We are different--it's us, him and me.
He's failed us because he's different and if he weren't we should be
like other people. Everything in the railway responded and agreed. Like
other people... horrible.... She thought of the fathers of girls she
knew--the Poole girls, for instance, they were to be "independent"
trained and certificated--she envied that--but her envy vanished when
she remembered how heartily she had agreed when Sarah called them
"sharp" and "knowing."

Mr. Poole was a business man... common... trade.... If Pater had kept to
Grandpa's business they would be trade, too--well-off, now--all married.
Perhaps as it was he had thought they would marry.

7

She thought sleepily of her Wesleyan grandpare