Mrs. Baines was unfortunate in her phrasing that morning. She happened to be, in truth, rather an exceptional parent, but that morning she seemed unable to avoid the absurd pretensions which parents of those days assumed quite sincerely and which every good child with meekness accepted.
Sophia was not a good child, and she obstinately denied in her heart the cardinal principle of family life, namely, that the parent has conferred on the offspring a supreme favour by bringing it into the world. She interrupted her mother again, rudely.
“I don’t want to leave school at all,” she said passionately.
“But you will have to leave school sooner or later,” argued Mrs. Baines, with an air of quiet reasoning, of putting herself on a level with Sophia. “You can’t stay at school for ever, my pet, can you? Out of my way!”
She hurried across the kitchen with a pie, which she whipped into the oven, shutting the iron door with a careful gesture.
“Yes,” said Sophia. “I should like to be a teacher. That’s what I want to be.”
The tap in the coal-cellar, out of repair, could be heard distinctly and systematically dropping water into a jar on the slopstone.
“A school-teacher?” inquired Mrs. Baines.
“Of course. What other kind is there?” said Sophia, sharply. “With Miss Chetwynd.”
“I don’t think your father would like that,” Mrs. Baines replied. “I’m sure he wouldn’t like it.”