be somebody’s servant all my life?  I won’t! If Alf doesn’t want to marry Emmy, he can go and whistle somewhere else.  There’s plenty of girls who’d jump at him.  But just because I don’t, he’ll worry me to death.  If I was to be all over him—­see Alf sheer off!  He’d think there was something funny about me.  Well, there is!  I’m Jenny Blanchard; and I’m going to keep Jenny Blanchard.  If I’ve got no right to live, then nobody’s got any right to keep me from living.  If there’s no rights, other people haven’t got any more than I have.  They can’t make me do anything—­by any right they’ve got.  People—­managing people—­think that because there isn’t a corner of the earth they haven’t collared they can tell you what you’ve got to do.  Give you a ticket and a number, get up at six, eat so much a day, have six children, do what you’re told.  That may do for some people; but it’s slavery.  And I’m not going to do it.  See!” She began to shout in her excited indignation.  “See!” she cried again.  “Just because I’m poor, I’m to do what I’m told.  They seem to think that because they like to do what they’re told, everybody ought to be the same.  They’re afraid.  They’re afraid of themselves—­afraid of being left alone in the dark.  They think everybody ought to be afraid—­in case anybody should find out that they’re cowards!  But I’m not afraid, and I’m not going to do what I’m told....  I won’t!”

In a frenzy she walked about the room, her eyes glittering, her face flushed with tumultuous anger.  This was her defiance to life.  She had been made into a rebel through long years in which she had unconsciously measured herself with others.  Because she was a human being, Jenny thought she had a right to govern her own actions.  With a whole priesthood against her, Jenny was a rebel against the world as it appeared to her—­a crushing, numerically overwhelming pressure that would rob her of her one spiritual reality—­the sense of personal freedom.

“Oh, I can’t stand it!” she said bitterly.  “I shall go mad!  And Em taking it all in, and ready to have Alf’s foot on her neck for life.  And Alf ready to have Em chained to his foot for life.  The fools!  Why, I wouldn’t ... not even to Keith....  No, I wouldn’t....  Fancy being boxed up and pretending I liked it—­just because other people say they like it.  Do as you’re told.  Do like other people.  All be the same—­a sticky mass of silly fools doing as they’re told!  All for a bit of bread, because somebody’s bagged the flour for ever!  And what’s the good of it?  If it was any good—­but it’s no good at all!  And they go on doing it because they’re cowards!  Cowards, that’s what they all are.  Well, I’m not like that!”