“Yes, I suppose one would—­at eighteen,” Aunt Janet mused reminiscently.  “But where can you go?”

“Oh anywhere—­I don’t care.  I’ll go anywhere—­now—­to-night.  Aunt, I’m not cruel and unkind, am I, to want to go away?  I’ll come back to you.  I’ll be kinder when I come back,” she cried anxiously.  “I can’t stop here and be petrified.”

For two days Aunt Janet thought and pondered while Marcella raged about Ben Grief with the wings of all the swifts and swallows on earth in her feet.  She faced many things these two days—­she planned many things.  She was like a generalissimo arranging details of the taking of the enemy’s entrenchments before ever the recruiting for his army had begun.  She was full of thoughts and intentions as ungraspable and spacious as the Milky Way.  She was not quite sure, up there with the winds lashing her face with her hair, whether she was going to save the world from whisky, materialism or dreams; she was not quite sure whether she was going to save women from having smaller brains and weaker bodies than men, or whether she was going to train herself out of being a woman.  At any rate, she was going out on the battle-path, glittering in armour.  As long as her eyes were on the stars and her hair streaming in the wind it did not seem to matter much where her feet were.  They would, she felt sure, follow her eyes.

And then Aunt Janet announced, at the end of two days, that she should write to Australia, to a brother of Rose Lashcairn’s who lived in Victoria on a big sheep run.  He had written at Rose’s death, offering to have the child—­one little girl more or less on his many acres would not count.  But Andrew had refused stiffly, insolently, and there the matter had dropped.  Now Aunt Janet sat down, and, quite characteristically bridging six years of silence and rather rude neglect, stated that Andrew was dead, the farm was not prospering, and she was sending Marcella out to him, as he had expressed a wish for her before.  She did not ask if this would be convenient.  It did not occur to her that Uncle Philip might be dead, or have left Wooratonga; with Lashcairn high-handedness—­to quote Wullie—­she expected all the world to do her bidding.

She did not mention the letter to Marcella until it was written; she lived so much inside her wall that the interest the letter must necessarily have for the girl did not occur to her until she called her downstairs and put it into her hand.

“You’ll need to take this letter to Carlossie, Marcella.  Jean is too busy to-day.  And ask about the postage to Australia.  I believe it’s only a penny.”

“Who do we know in Australia?” asked Marcella.

“Your mother’s brother Philip.  I’ve written to tell him you’ll be coming to him.  He wrote when your mother died saying he would have you, but your father refused then.  I’ve told him you’ll be coming shortly, so we’ll need to cable when we’ve looked up the boats and everything.”