"But I'm not expelled."
"You are expelled. And you know it."
"No. They said I wasn't. They didn't want me to go. They told me you wanted me back again."
"Is it likely I should want you when you hadn't been gone three weeks?"
She could hear herself gasp, see herself standing there, open-mouthed, idiotic.
Nothing could shake her mother in her belief that she had been expelled.
"Of course, if it makes you happier to believe it," she said at last, "do. Will you let me see Miss Lambert's letter?"
"No," her mother said. "I will not."
Suddenly she felt hard and strong, grown-up in her sad wisdom. Her mother didn't love her. She never had loved her. Nothing she could ever do would make her love her. Miracles didn't happen.
She thought: "I wonder why she won't let me see Miss Lambert's letter?"