The wind rushed into the room so violently that she had to shut the window. The lamp-flames were leaping up the glasses. A different tune began and made the tortured little girl less fierce. "I won't be wild any more," she said; but an idea had entered her brain, and she gave it expression by murmuring again and again: "Nobody knows, nobody knows. Only he knew, and he is dead." That was true enough. Only Weevil and her mother knew the truth about her shameful origin. The mother had not been seen that night placing the bundle of fern in the porch. She could not have been seen, as nobody in the neighbourhood knew where Boodles really came from, and the fact that the stories which they had invented about her were entirely false proved their ignorance. Probably nobody knew that her mother had given birth to a child. Boodles thought of that as she walked to and fro murmuring, "Nobody knows." Old Weevil's death might prove to be a blessing in disguise. "I will not stand it," she kept on saying. "I will not bear the punishment of my father's sin. I will be a liar too--just once, and then I will be truthful for ever. I will make up my own story, and it won't be wild like his. I understand it all now. In this funny old world of sheep-people one follows another, not because the one in front knows anything, but just because he is in front; and when the leader laughs the ones behind laugh too, and when the leader says 'how vile,' the ones behind say 'how vile' too. I suppose we are all sheep-people, and I am only different because I have black wool, and I am on the wrong side of the hedge and can't get among the respectable white baa-baas. I won't harm any of them. I will be wicked once, in self-defence, to get this black wool off, and then I'll be a very good white respectable sheep-person ever after. The truth is there," she said, nodding at the little heap of books, "and the truth is going to be burnt."