"It isn't. But they'd treat me wrong. They'd make me stay at home. And I won't stay at home—I won't stay there. They act as if I was ten years old."
Abruptly in Lulu's face there came a light of understanding.
"Why, Di," she said, "do you feel that way too?"
Di missed this. She went on:
"I'm grown up. I feel just as grown up as they do. And I'm not allowed to do a thing I feel. I want to be away—I will be away!"
"I know about that part," Lulu said.
She now looked at Di with attention. Was it possible that Di was suffering in the air of that home as she herself suffered? She had not thought of that. There Di had seemed so young, so dependent, so—asquirm. Here, by herself, waiting for Bobby, in the Hess House at Millton, she was curiously adult. Would she be adult if she were let alone?
"You don't know what it's like," Di cried, "to be hushed up and laughed at and paid no attention to, everything you say."
"Don't I?" said Lulu. "Don't I?"
She was breathing quickly and looking at Di. If this was why Di was leaving home....