She put back her head, seeing a typewritten letter, anticipating trouble from the outside world. There was the curious, sliding motion of her eyes, as if she shut off her sentient, maternal self, and a kind of hard trance, meaningless, took its place. Thus, meaningless, she glanced over the letter, careful not to take it in. She apprehended the contents with her callous, superficial mind. Her feeling self was shut down.
“What post is it?” she asked.
“She wants to go and be a teacher in Kingston-on-Thames, at fifty pounds a year.”
“Oh, indeed.”
The mother spoke as if it were a hostile fact concerning some stranger. She would have let her go, out of callousness. Mrs. Brangwen would begin to grow up again only with her youngest child. Her eldest girl was in the way now.
“She’s not going all that distance,” said the father.
“I have to go where they want me,” cried Ursula. “And it’s a good place to go to.”
“What do you know about the place?” said her father harshly.
“And it doesn’t matter whether they want you or not, if your father says you are not to go,” said the mother calmly.
How Ursula hated her!