“That must be considered.  As Constance is to learn the millinery, I’ve been thinking that you might begin to make yourself useful in the underwear, gloves, silks, and so on.  Then between you, you would one day be able to manage quite nicely all that side of the shop, and I should be—­”

“I don’t want to go into the shop, mother.”

This interruption was made in a voice apparently cold and inimical.  But Sophia trembled with nervous excitement as she uttered the words.  Mrs. Baines gave a brief glance at her, unobserved by the child, whose face was towards the fire.  She deemed herself a finished expert in the reading of Sophia’s moods; nevertheless, as she looked at that straight back and proud head, she had no suspicion that the whole essence and being of Sophia was silently but intensely imploring sympathy.

“I wish you would be quiet with that fork,” said Mrs. Baines, with the curious, grim politeness which often characterized her relations with her daughters.

The toasting-fork fell on the brick floor, after having rebounded from the ash-tin.  Sophia hurriedly replaced it on the rack.

“Then what shall you do?” Mrs. Baines proceeded, conquering the annoyance caused by the toasting-fork.  “I think it’s me that should ask you instead of you asking me.  What shall you do?  Your father and I were both hoping you would take kindly to the shop and try to repay us for all the—­”

Mrs. Baines was unfortunate in her phrasing that morning.  She happened to be, in truth, rather an exceptional parent, but that morning she seemed unable to avoid the absurd pretensions which parents of those days assumed quite sincerely and which every good child with meekness accepted.

Sophia was not a good child, and she obstinately denied in her heart the cardinal principle of family life, namely, that the parent has conferred on the offspring a supreme favour by bringing it into the world.  She interrupted her mother again, rudely.

“I don’t want to leave school at all,” she said passionately.

“But you will have to leave school sooner or later,” argued Mrs. Baines, with an air of quiet reasoning, of putting herself on a level with Sophia.  “You can’t stay at school for ever, my pet, can you?  Out of my way!”

She hurried across the kitchen with a pie, which she whipped into the oven, shutting the iron door with a careful gesture.

“Yes,” said Sophia.  “I should like to be a teacher.  That’s what I want to be.”

The tap in the coal-cellar, out of repair, could be heard distinctly and systematically dropping water into a jar on the slopstone.

“A school-teacher?” inquired Mrs. Baines.

“Of course.  What other kind is there?” said Sophia, sharply.  “With Miss Chetwynd.”

“I don’t think your father would like that,” Mrs. Baines replied.  “I’m sure he wouldn’t like it.”

“Why not?”