"What chance would I have in a competitive exam. against Goulburn girls?
They all have good teachers and give up their time to study. I only have
old Harris, and he is the most idiotic old animal alive; besides, I
loathe the very thought of teaching. I'd as soon go on the wallaby."

"You are not old enough to be a general servant or a cook; you have not
experience enough to be a housemaid; you don't take to sewing, and there
is no chance of being accepted as a hospital nurse: you must confess
there is nothing you can do. You are really a very useless girl for your
age."

"There are heaps of things I could do."

"Tell me a few of them."

I was silent. The professions at which I felt I had the latent power to
excel, were I but given a chance, were in a sphere far above us, and to
mention my feelings and ambitions to my matter-of-fact practical mother
would bring upon me worse ridicule than I was already forced to endure
day by day.

"Mention a few of the things you could do."

I might as well have named flying as the professions I was thinking of.
Music was the least unmentionable of them, so I brought it forward.

"Music! But it would take years of training and great expense before you
could earn anything at that! It is quite out of the question. The only
thing for you to do is to settle down and take interest in your work, and
help make a living at home, or else go out as a nurse-girl, and work your
way up. If you have any ability in you it would soon show. If you think
you could do such strokes, and the home work is not good enough for you,
go out and show the world what a wonderful creature you are."

"Mother, you are unjust and cruel!" I exclaimed. "You do not understand
one at all. I never thought I could do strokes. I cannot help being
constituted so that grimy manual labour is hateful to me, for it is
hateful to me, and I hate it more and more every day, and you can preach
and preach till you go black in the face, and still I'll hate it more
than ever. If I have to do it all my life, and if I'm cursed with a long
life, I'll hate it just as much at the end as I do now. I'm sure it's not
any wish of mine that I'm born with inclinations for better things. If I
could be born again, and had the designing of myself, I'd be born the
lowest and coarsest-minded person imaginable, so that I could find plenty
of companionship, or I'd be born an idiot, which would be better still."

"Sybylla!" said my mother in a sh