She had a certain amount of money. She had come home partly to save, and now she had sold several pieces of work, she had been praised in various shows. She knew she could become quite the “go’ if she went to London. But she knew London, she wanted something else. She had seventy pounds, of which nobody knew anything. She would move soon, as soon as she heard from her friends. Her nature, in spite of her apparent placidity and calm, was profoundly restless.
The sisters happened to call in a cottage in Willey Green to buy honey. Mrs Kirk, a stout, pale, sharp-nosed woman, sly, honied, with something shrewish and cat-like beneath, asked the girls into her too cosy, too tidy kitchen. There was a cat-like comfort and cleanliness everywhere.
“Yes, Miss Brangwen,” she said, in her slightly whining, insinuating voice, “and how do you like being back in the old place, then?”
Gudrun, whom she addressed, hated her at once.
“I don’t care for it,” she replied abruptly.
“You don’t? Ay, well, I suppose you found a difference from London. You like life, and big, grand places. Some of us has to be content with Willey Green and Beldover. And what do you think of our Grammar School, as there’s so much talk about?”
“What do I think of it?” Gudrun looked round at her slowly. “Do you mean, do I think it’s a good school?”
“Yes. What is your opinion of it?”
“I do think it’s a good school.”
Gudrun was very cold and repelling. She knew the common people hated the school.