She slipped down on to the sofa beside her friend, and moved close to her with a caressing movement, as she took the tea-cup from her hand. “These cakes were baked expressly for you, so you must do them justice. Really cook makes them very prettily, doesn’t she? They’re rather like the cakes in _Goblin Market_. Do you remember how the sisters ‘_Kneaded cakes of whitest wheat, Cakes for dainty mouths to eat?_’” She passed them to Sylvia in their silver basket, over the rim of which fell a d’oyley of fine lace and linen. Sylvia shook her head. “I don’t know anything!” she exclaimed. “I shall never know anything if I stay here. Oh Miss Page, _do_ help me to get away! You can do anything with father. Please persuade him that I ought to go. You know how it is at home. I’m not really wanted. We’re quite comfortably off, and there are enough servants to do the work without _making_ work for me, to try to keep me quiet when I’m aching to go and make my own life!” She pushed her cup away from her with an impatient movement. Anne waited a moment. “It’s still the music, I suppose?” “Yes. I _have_ got a voice. I know I could do something with it. And you see they don’t understand. Mother says I can take lessons from Miss Rowe at Dorminster. _Miss Rowe!_” She laughed derisively. “And father says if I sing well enough to please them at home, and to lead in the choir, what more do I want? They expect me to trot round with mother on her district calls, when I’m really only in the way. Mother _likes_ doing it. She wouldn’t give up her work to me even if I wished it. And I’m supposed to do needlework for the children, when poor Mrs. Jones down the village would be glad of it, and ought to have it. And they think I’m awful and ungrateful not to be quite happy with tennis parties and flower shows for my amusement! Oh Miss Page, don’t you think to be a daughter at home, with no money, at the mercy of your parents, unable to get away, is just like being a slave?” She poured out the words passionately. Her hands were shaking, her eyes full of tears. Anne looked at her, and a wave of comprehension and pity passed over her heart. The girl’s incoherent words were echoes; they touched painful memories of years for her, long past. She recognized the despairing cry of youth, articulate in these modern times, no longer stifled as in the days of her own girlhood. Youth, fettered, struggling with passionate clamour to be free. She recognized the revolt of a temperament unsuited to its environment, bound by a tyranny no less stifling because it was unconscious and even loving. She rose, and began to walk about the room, conscious of the modern spirit, accepting it as inevitable, and in spite of all the misery it involved, right in its essence, a necessary step towards the just claim for individual liberty. Sylvia watched her hungrily, like a prisoner who has staked his existence on the goodwill and clemency of a ruler.