A man, anxious for full independence, would have gone into bachelor rooms; but young women did not go into bachelor rooms. They achieved their independence perfectly well, and far more cheaply, by going into a boarding house. She therefore, very excitedly, went into a boarding house. There was no difficulty about leaving Aunt Belle’s. Once Rosalie was established in business with Mr. Simcox, tied to business hours, and earning a weekly salary, she no longer occupied in Aunt Belle’s house the position of dependence which was in Aunt Belle’s house the first, and indeed the only, qualification for all who occupied her house. Aunt Belle’s guests had to be guests: wealthy guests who could be entertained from early morning tea (beautifully served) to bedtime and made graciously to admire; or if poor guests, and particularly poor relations, guests who could be even more impressed and were naturally much more enthusiastically delighted and profoundly admiring. Rosalie, in business, could not be entertained and did not sufficiently admire. She had to have a special early breakfast; she disappeared; she was not in to lunch or tea; she was not sufficiently impressed by what cook had prepared but had rather too much to say about what she had been doing, at dinner; and she excused herself away to early bed on the ground of fatigue or of having certain books to study. Rosalie, in business, was not a guest at all in Aunt Belle’s sense of the word: indeed there came an occasion--Rosalie twice in one week late for dinner--when Aunt Belle said awfully, “My house is not a hotel, Rosalie. I cannot have my nice house turned into a hotel.” It was the nearest thing to an unkind word ever spoken by Aunt Belle to Rosalie, and it was so near that it brought Aunt Belle up to Rosalie’s bed that night--solicitude in a terrific dressing gown of crimson silk--to express the hope that Rosalie was not crying (she was not; she had been sound asleep) at anything Aunt Belle “might have said.” “But you see, dear child, there are the servants to consider, all that delicious soup and all that most tasty turbot au gratin to be kept warm for you, and there is your kind Uncle Pyke to consider; men do not like their meals to be...”