passionate, and had suggested beauty rather than short skirts and latch-keys. But independence was certainly her cue.

“Very well. Take your independence and be gone. Rush up and down and round the world, and come back as thin as a lath with the bad food. Despise the house that your father built and the garden that he planted, and our dear view — and then share a flat with another girl.”

Lucy screwed up her mouth and said: “Perhaps I spoke hastily.”

“Oh, goodness!” her mother flashed. “How you do remind me of Charlotte Bartlett!”

“Charlotte!” flashed Lucy in her turn, pierced at last by a vivid pain.

“More every moment.”