He had always hugged a secret pride in the fact that his daughters need not go out to work. With his wife’s money and his own they had four hundred a year. They could draw on the capital if need be later on. He was not afraid for his old age. His daughters might be ladies.

Fifty pounds a year was a pound a week—which was enough for her to live on independently.

“And what sort of a teacher do you think you’d make? You haven’t the patience of a Jack-gnat with your own brothers and sisters, let alone with a class of children. And I thought you didn’t like dirty, board- school brats.”

“They’re not all dirty.”

“You’d find they’re not all clean.”

There was silence in the workshop. The lamplight fell on the burned silver bowl that lay between him, on mallet and furnace and chisel. Brangwen stood with a queer, catlike light on his face, almost like a smile. But it was no smile.

“Can I try?” she said.

“You can do what the deuce you like, and go where you like.”

Her face was fixed and expressionless and indifferent. It always sent him to a pitch of frenzy to see it like that. He kept perfectly still.

Cold, without any betrayal of feeling, she turned and left the shed. He worked on, with all his nerves jangled. Then he had to put down his tools and go into the house.

In a bitter tone of anger and contempt he told his wife. Ursula was present. There was a brief altercation, closed by Mrs. Brangwen’s saying, in a tone of biting superiority and indifference:

“Let her find out what it’s like. She’ll soon have had enough.”

The matter was left there. But Ursula considered herself free to act. For some days she made no move. She was reluctant to take the cruel step of finding work, for she shrank with extreme sensitiveness and shyness from new contact, new situations. Then at length a sort of doggedness drove her. Her soul was full of bitterness.

She went to the Free Library in Ilkeston, copied out addresses from the Schoolmistress, and wrote for application forms. After two days she rose early to meet the postman. As she expected, there were three long envelopes.

Her heart beat painfully as she went up with them to her bedroom. Her fingers trembled, she could hardly force herself to look at the long, official forms she had to fill in. The whole thing was so cruel, so impersonal. Yet it must be done.

“Name (surname first):.....”

In a trembling hand she wrote, “Brangwen,—Ursula.”

“Age and date of birth:.....”

After a long time considering, she filled in that line.

“Qualifications, with date of Examination:.....”

With a little pride she wrote: