“Don’t be offended. I like it. But you must not make a fool of yourself. Your hair is too much that of a country beauty going to a ball. Paterson will show you how to do your hair.”
“Oh, I say, aunt,” cried Lavender, with a fine show of carelessness, “you mustn’t go and spoil her hair. I think it is very pretty as it is, and that woman of yours would simply go and make a mop of it. You’d think the girls nowadays dressed their hair by shoving their head into a furze bush and giving it a couple of turns.”
She paid no heed to him, but turned to Sheila and said, “You are an only child?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you leave your father?”
The question was rather a cruel one, and it stung Sheila into answering bravely. “Because my husband wished me.”
“Oh! You think your husband is to be the first law of your life?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Even when he is only silly Frank Lavender?”
Sheila rose. There was a quivering of her lips, but no weakness in the proud, indignant look of her eyes: