aking them
worse. If you are going to nag, we'll go downstairs and leave you to
yourselves. It's such bad form to kick up a fuss; but girls are all
alike. You wouldn't find a boy going on like that--"

Rowena turned upon him with wide, challenging eyes.

"Wouldn't I? Are you so sure? Suppose father were to tell you to-
morrow that you couldn't be a soldier, but must go into an office and
try to earn money for yourself... Suppose he took you away from Eton,
Gurth, and sent you to a cheap school! How would you like that?"

Silence... The two lads sat staring into the fire with dogged faces.
They scorned to cry aloud, but the horror of the prospect had for a
moment a so paralysing effect that they could not reply. Leave
Sandhurst in the middle of one's course, and become--a _clerk_! Leave
Eton and the fellows, and go to one of those miserable, second-rate
shows which all good Etonians regarded with ineffable contempt! Was it
possible to suffer such degradation and live?

Rowena was touched to compunction by the sight of the stricken faces,
for though at the moment the worst side of her character was in the
ascendant, she was by no means hard-hearted, and, moreover, Hereward was
her especial friend and companion. She laughed again, and gave an
impatient shrug to her shoulders.

"Oh, don't be afraid ... He never _will_! Whatever happens, nothing
will be allowed to interfere with `the boys' and their careers! We
shall all pinch and screw and live on twopence-halfpenny a week, so as
to be able to pay your bills. It's always the same story. Everything
is sacrificed for the sons."

"Quite right, too," maintained the eldest son, stoutly. "How are you
going to keep up the honour of a family if you don't give the boys a
chance? It doesn't matter a fig whether a girl is educated or not, so
long as she can read and write. She'll marry, of course, and then she
has nothing to do but add up the bills."

At this truly masculine distinction, Rowena and Dreda tossed scornful
heads and rolled indignant eyes to the ceiling.

"I shall never marry!" announced the former, thinking ruefully of the
bare countryside, with never a house of consequence within a radius of
miles ... "I am a suffragette. I believe in the high, lofty mission of
women!" cried the second, who had been converted to the movement the day
before by the sight of some sketches in the _Daily Graphic_. Only nine-
year-old Maud sniffed, and opined,