"So do I. And yet perhaps it will be good for me to begin alone."
"You won't be alone."
"No. Of course, there will be Lady MacMillan taking me to London. And afterward there'll be my aunt and cousin. But I've never seen them since I was too tiny to remember them at all, except that my cousin Elinor had a lovely big doll she wouldn't let me touch. It's the same as being alone, going to them. I shall have to get acquainted with them and the world at the same time."
"Are you terrified?"
"A little. Oh, a good deal! I think now, at the last moment, I'd take everything back, and stay, if I could."
"No, you wouldn't, if you had the choice, and you saw the gates closing on you—forever. You'd run out."
"I don't know. Perhaps. But how I shall miss them all! Reverend Mother, and the sisters, and you, and the garden, and looking out over the lake far away to the mountains."
"But there'll be other mountains."
"Yes, other mountains."
"Think of the mountains of Italy."