Anyway, I made up my mind to make a bolt for it. Now don't run away with the notion that the police will be after me, because I very much hope they won't. In fact, I don't think they'll do anything. But the whole affair gave me a shock and Valentine's behavior upset me. You see, when your mother was alive if I'd had a bad week she used to help me out; but Valentine actually asked me for money. She accused me of all sorts of things which, luckily, you're too young to understand; and I really didn't like to refuse her when I'd got the money. "Well, it's been a lesson to me and I tell you I've missed your mother these last months. She was jealous; she was close; she had a tongue; but a finer woman never lived, and I'm proud of her. She used to wish you were a boy. Well, I don't blame her. After all, she'd had six girls, and what use are they to anybody? None at all. They might as well not exist. Women go off and get married and take somebody else's name, and it's finished. There's not one of your sisters that's really stayed in the family. A selfish crowd, and the worst of the lot was Valentine. Yes, you ought to have been a boy. I'll tell you what, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you _were_ a boy for a bit. You see, in case the French police make inquiries, it would be just as well to throw them off the scent; and, another thing, it would be much easier for me till I find my feet again in London. Would you like to be a boy, Sylvia? There's no reason against it that I can see, and plenty of reasons for it. Of course it means cutting off your hair, but they say that's a very good thing for the hair once in a way. You'll be more free, too, as a boy, and less of a responsibility. There's no doubt a girl would be a big responsibility in London." "But could I be a boy?" Sylvia asked. "I'd like to be a boy if I could. And what should I be called?" "Of course you could be a boy," her father affirmed, enthusiastically. "You were always a bit of a _garçon_ _manqué_, as the French say. I'll buy you a Norfolk suit." Sylvia was not yet sufficiently unsexed not to want to know more about her proposed costume. Her father pledged his word that it would please her; his description of it recalled the dress that people in Lille put on to go shooting sparrows on Sunday. "_Un sporting?_" Sylvia queried. "That's about it," her father agreed. "If you had any scissors with you, I'd start right in now and cut your hair." Sylvia said she had scissors in her bag; and presently she and her father retired to the outer gloom of the junction, where, undisturbed by a single curious glance, Sylvia's curls were swept away by the wind. "I've not done it quite so neatly as I might," said her father, examining the effect under a wavering gas-jet. "I'll have you properly cropped to-morrow at a hairdresser's."