"Mrs. Matheson told me they will only do exactly what they wish--that they won't take her brother's advice. Very wrong, very wrong." The Rector shook his grey head. "Young women were different in my youth." Mrs. Amberley sighed, and Susy biting her lip, knew that her own conduct was perhaps more in question than Miss Blanchflower's. They reached home in silence. Susy went to light her father's candles in his modest book-littered study. Then she put her mother on the sofa in the drawing-room, rubbed Mrs. Amberley's cold hands and feet, and blew up the fire. Suddenly her mother threw an arm round her neck. "Oh, Susy, must you go?" Susy kissed her. "I should come back"--she said after a moment in a low troubled voice. "Let me get this training, and then if you want me, darling, I'll come back." "Can't you be happy with us, Susy?" "I want to _know_ something--and _do_ something," said Susy, with intensity--evading the question. "It's such a big world, mother! I'll be better worth having afterwards." Mrs. Amberley said nothing. But a little later she went into her husband's study. "Frank--I think we'll have to let her," she said piteously. The Rector looked up assentingly, and put his hand in his wife's. "It's strange how different it all seems nowadays," said Mrs. Amberley, in her low quavering voice. "If I'd wanted to do what Susy wants, my mother would have called me a wicked girl to leave all my duties--and I shouldn't have dared. But we can't take it like that, Frank, somehow." "No," said the Rector slowly. "In the old days it used to be only _duties_ for the young--now it's rights too. It's God's will." "Susy loves us, Frank. She's a good girl." "She's a good girl--and she shall do what she thinks proper," said the Rector, rising heavily. So they gave their consent, and Susy wrote her application to Guy's hospital. Then they all three lay awake a good deal of the night,--almost till the autumn robin began to sing in the little rectory garden. As for Susy, in the restless intervals of restless sleep, she was always back in the Bridge End drawing-room watching Delia Blanchflower come in, with Mark Winnington behind. How glorious she looked! And every day he would be seeing her, every day he would be thinking about her--just because she was sure to give him so much trouble.