care what THEY think of me. FE M’EN FICHE.’

Gudrun looked up at Ursula with a queer, uncertain envy and dislike.

‘Of course, the only thing to do is to despise them all — just all,’ she said.

The sisters went home again, to read and talk and work, and wait for Monday, for school. Ursula often wondered what else she waited for, besides the beginning and end of the school week, and the beginning and end of the holidays. This was a whole life! Sometimes she had periods of tight horror, when it seemed to her that her life would pass away, and be gone, without having been more than this. But she never really accepted it. Her spirit was active, her life like a shoot that is growing steadily, but which has not yet come above ground.