“Aunt Beryl has lent the paper to Mrs. Jackson for something,” she faltered, feeling much disposed to cry. “She said you were sure not to want it before to-night.”
“Quite wrong. I want it at once. Now don’t say can’t again,” said Grandpapa sharply.
The unfortunate Lydia looked helplessly at her tyrant.
“There’s no such thing as can’t,” said Grandpapa truculently. “Just you take hold of that and don’t you ever forget it. Never place any reliance on a person who says can’t. Let ’em say they won’t—or they don’t want to—that may be true. The other isn’t. Anybody can do anything, if they only make up their minds to it.”
Grandpapa and his descendant faced one another in silence for a minute or so across the echo of this Spartan theory. At last the old man said contemptuously:
“If you haven’t learnt that yet, you’re not ready for any more schooling than we can give you here, I can tell you.”
It was as Lydia had feared!
The future of one’s education, the whole of one’s career in fact, was at stake.
Lydia gulped at an enormous lump in her throat and managed to articulate with sufficient determination:
“I’ll fetch it.”