It was like beating yourself on a brick wall. I felt frantic.
“But what’s going to become of you? You’ve got no means of livelihood.”
She shrugged again.
“I don’t know. But one thing I do know and that is that I won’t do slave’s work for you, or Mrs. Ferguson, or any one else in the world.”
I didn’t know what to say. I might go on talking all night and not make a dent on her. Demosthenes would have turned away baffled before her impossible unreasonableness.
It was getting dark and I could see her as a tall black silhouette against the blue dusk of the window. There was only one suggestion left.
“Are you going to take Dolly Bliss’s advice and marry?” My voice sounded unnatural, like somebody else’s.
“Marry?” she echoed absently. “I suppose I could do that.”
“Is it that you can’t make up your mind, Lizzie?”
“I don’t know,” she murmured again, this time as if she wasn’t thinking of what she said.