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