"I certainly shouldn't have come if I had known."
"Who would? Ave, have you ever seen a little wild linnet get into a bird-catcher's net?"
"No."
"I have. It runs and struggles and beats its wings, and the more it tries to escape the worse it gets caught in the meshes. Ave, at present I feel like that linnet."
"Can't I help you, Pam?"
"Not yet. I want to think. When I really feel you can help me, I shall come and ask you. You wouldn't fail me?"
"I'd help you for all I'm worth, if it's against your uncle."
Pamela's eyes filled with tears.
"I'm so utterly alone," she faltered. "Mother doesn't understand. Since Father died she has never cared for anything. She's content to live here on Uncle's bounty. She's so absolutely trusting and unsuspicious, just like a child. I never can get her to see things as I do. Although I'm hardly fourteen, I often feel that I know more of the world than she does. Just at present Mother is going about with her eyes closed."
"And you?"