“And who would take you as a governess? You don't find it easy to live even with your own people, and I don't know what you can teach. Perhaps you will reproach me as Laura did her mother, and say it was my fault you didn't go to Girton?”
“Oh, I think I can manage. My music is not much, I know; but I think it's good enough to be useful.”
“Are you going to say that I was wrong in not encouraging you to train for a professional musician?”
“I hadn't the faintest notion of reproaching you for anything: it was only modesty.”
She knew that having passed the period when she might have cried, she was being fatigued into the flippant stage, and her father hated that above everything.
“Now you're beginning to sneer in your superior way,” Dr. Worgan said, walking up the room, “talking to me as if I were an idiot——”
He was interrupted by the maid who came in to ask Janet whether she could put out the light in the hall. Janet looked questioningly at her father, who had faced round when he heard the door open, and he said yes.
“And, Callant,” Janet cried after her, and then went on in a lower tone as she reappeared, “we shall want breakfast at eight to-morrow; Dr. Worgan is going out early.”
The door was shut once more. Her father seemed vexed at the interruption so welcome to her.
“Well, I never could persuade you in anything; but I resent the way in which you look on my advice as if it were selfish—I'm only anxious for your own welfare.”