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....

“But, Di,” she cried, “do you love Bobby Larkin?”

By this Di was embarrassed.  “I’ve got to marry somebody,” she said, “and it might as well be him.”

“But is it him?”

“Yes, it is,” said Di.  “But,” she added, “I know I could love almost anybody real nice that was nice to me.”  And this she said, not in her own right, but either she had picked it up somewhere and adopted it, or else the terrible modernity and honesty of her day somehow spoke through her, for its own.  But to Lulu it was as if something familiar turned its face to be recognised.

“Di!” she cried.

“It’s true.  You ought to know that.”  She waited for a moment.  “You did it,” she added.  “Mamma said so.”

At this onslaught Lulu was stupefied.  For she began to perceive its truth.

“I know what I want to do, I guess,” Di muttered, as if to try to cover what she had said.

Up to that moment, Lulu had been feeling intensely that she understood Di, but that Di did not know this.  Now Lulu felt that she and Di actually shared some unsuspected sisterhood.  It was not only that they were both badgered by Dwight.  It was more than that.  They were two women.  And she must make Di know that she understood her.

“Di,” Lulu said, breathing hard, “what you just said is true, I guess.  Don’t you think I don’t know.  And now I’m going to tell you—­”

She might have poured it all out, claimed her kinship with Di by virtue of that which had happened in Savannah, Georgia.  But Di said: 

“Here come some ladies.  And goodness, look at the way you look!”

Lulu glanced down.  “I know,” she said, “but I guess you’ll have to put up with me.”

The two women entered, looked about with the complaisance of those who examine a hotel property, find criticism incumbent, and have no errand.  These two women had outdressed their occasion.  In their presence Di kept silence, turned away her head, gave them to know that she had nothing to do with this blue cotton person beside her.  When they had gone on, “What do you mean by my having to put up with you?” Di asked sharply.