“Now, darling, you’re not to get over-excited,” admonished Aunt Effie from the other side of the table. “Your father is willing to pay rather a large fee to give you this lovely surprise, and I must say it’s not very grateful of you—”

“Of course I’m not grateful!” stormed Sabrina. “I love this house! I love the garden—I love the feel of things here! I can’t go away now, this is home, the first real home I’ve ever had! Who on earth wants to go to the Continent anyway, they’re all murdering each other over there!”

“Not in Switzerland,” Aunt Effie objected feebly.

“Father, please say you’ll give up this horrible idea and let me alone! I’m not ill, I’ll study anything you like, I’ll learn Greek if you’ll only let me stay here, at home!”

Father rose, with his full teacup in one hand, and held out the other for Antiquity.

“When you have quite finished making a scene, Sabrina,” he said coldly. “Thank you.” He took the magazine out of her unresisting fingers and departed with dignity to his study, carrying his tea.

“There!” said Aunt Effie reproachfully. “Now he won’t come out for hours, and I shall have to send in his luncheon on a tray, and that makes extra trouble in the kitchen. Sit down and eat your breakfast, Sabrina.”

“Please, Auntie, I—”

“You haven’t touched your plate. It’s wasting good food.”

With her eyes flooding helpless tears, Sabrina subsided into her chair and began to choke down mouthfuls of cold bacon. She knew defeat when she met it. Father was on Aunt Effie’s side, he always was, and Aunt Effie had made up her mind with the terrible obstinacy of the habitually indecisive. Nothing but the end of the world would save her now from that Swiss school which for some reason Aunt Effie had set her heart on. There was no one to appeal to, no arbiter whose power was greater than theirs who had sentenced her. She was done.

When at last she was able to get away from the table, she climbed the stairs to her own room and stood idly just inside the closed door, feeling beaten and sick and bewildered—and worst of all, trapped. The impulse to escape surged up in panic. How if, when they came to take her away, she could not be found? Her small square chin came up. Yes, of course—there was still time to disappear.

She seized a hat from the wardrobe, threw a coat over her arm, hurried to the dressing-table for her hand-bag. One’s weekly allowance piled up at Nuns Farthing where there was no need to buy flowers or books or cakes for tea. She had accumulated something over two pounds. One could go a long way on two pounds. One could get a job as a waitress or something.