She undressed and got into bed. It was quite dark, and she felt acutely miserable. Far away the pumping engine at the water-works whispered, as it always did at night-time, “Chug-chug ... chug-chug ... chug-chug-chug....” Ten, twelve years had passed since she had counted the five knobs on the brass rail of the bed. She was growing up, out of a child into a girl. She was not growing up without faults: she knew that. The worst trait in her was temper ... she would have to conquer that. She must learn self-control.... From below came the old familiar sound of her father taking off his boots and dumping them under the sofa. “H-rooch-flop ... h’rooch-flop.” ... That sound was bound up with all her memories of childhood. Ten minutes later there came a cautious tap at her door, and her father entered in an intermediate stage of attire. He lit a candle clumsily and shone it down upon her. She did not move. He prodded her with his thumb in a vague, experimental way. She made no reply, though her eyes were wide open and staring into his. “I say, Cathie,” he began, vaguely and nervously, “you’ve bin misbehaving, I’m told.... It’s too bad, you know.... Come now ... be a good girl and go to sleep.” Pause. Then: “Kiss me.” It was the first time for many years that he had asked for such a thing. With no apparent reason at all the tears welled up into her eyes, tears that she had hidden since her tenth birthday. She was just about to raise her head to meet his when a drop of liquid candle grease fell on her bare arm. The sharp, unexpected pain made her a prey to a sudden gust of tempestuous emotion.... “Oh, go away,” she muttered angrily, “don’t come bothering me ... I’m tired....” She crouched down beneath the bedclothes with her face turned away from him. Mr. Weston retired a little sheepishly. “Oh, well,” he said, “if you’re going to be sulky ... I suppose....” When he had gone she cried as she had never cried before, and all because she had spurned his proffered reconciliation. From the other side of the thin partition that separated the two rooms, she could hear the sharp “plock” as her father wrenched his collar off the stud, and the steady nasal monotone of her mother’s voice. She could not discern any words, but from the vicious way in which her father kept stumbling up against things she guessed that they were quarrelling.... CHAPTER II JEUNESSE § 1 CATHERINE won an open scholarship to the Upton Rising High School for Girls. She did not win it because of any particular brilliance or erudition in her examination papers; she won it, as a matter of fact, because Mr. McGill, one of the Governors, happened to remark to Miss Forsdyke, the headmistress: “I hear Weston’s got his daughter in for a scholarship.” Miss Forsdyke said, “Weston?--Weston?--Let me see--I believe I’ve heard the name somewhere ... Er ... who is he?”