Part 2, Chapter VIII.
Going to School.
All the preparations for school had been made, and it was the day before I was to leave. My trunks—I had several now—were packed. Augusta was coming too, and so was Hermione. Hermione had come to spend the last evening with us in the old house behind the great college. She was very much interested and highly pleased.
The last fortnight of my time at home had gone on wings. Lady Lilian St. Leger had lifted me into a new world. She was a daring, bright, true-hearted girl. She did not mind treating me with a sort of playful lightness which was very refreshing after the stifling time I had spent in that awful drawing-room; but she also had said good-bye.
“We shall meet in the holidays,” she said. “I shall see you sometimes. I am to come out as soon as ever I am presented, and I’ll be presented at the first Drawing-room. After that it will be nothing but rush and tumult; I’ll be wishing myself dead all the time, for there will be no hope of anything. I am going to make up my mind to accept the first man who proposes for me.”
“Oh, but you won’t do that!” I said, for I had very primitive and very sacred ideas on such topics.
“Oh, just to get rid of the thing! I only trust he’ll be young and poor and ugly. If he is young and poor and ugly, and I fall madly in love with him, there’ll be such a rumpus, and that would be a rare bit of fun. But dear, darling mamma will have to give way, because I can always make her do what I like.”
“But your father?” I said.