"Pooh! What does my hair matter ?" Her mind was full of an adventure through which she had passed seven years previously, when she was thirteen and a little girl at school.

For several days, then, she had been ruthlessly mortifying her mother by complaints about the meals.

Her fastidious appetite could not be suited.
At last, one noon when the child had refused the whole of a plenteous dinner, Mrs.Lessways had burst into tears and, slapping four pennies down on the table, had cried, "Here! I fairly give you up! Go out and buy your own dinner! Then perhaps you'll get what you want!" And the child, without an instant's hesitation, had seized the coins and gone out, hatless, and bought food at a little tripe-shop that was also an eating-house, and consumed it there; and then in grim silence returned home.

Both mother and daughter had been stupefied and frightened by the boldness of the daughter's initiative, by her amazing, flaunting disregard of filial decency.

Mrs.Lessways would not have related the episode to anybody upon any consideration whatever.