"Society is no boon to those not sociable"--on her birthday-page in Ellen Sharpe's birthday-book. Ellen handed it to her going upstairs and had chanted the words out to the others and smiled her smile ... she had not asked her to write her name ... was it unsociable to dislike so many of the girls.... Ellen's people were in the Indian ... her thoughts hesitated.... Sivvle ... something grand--All the grand girls were horrid ... somehow mean and sly ... Sivvle ... _Sivvle_ ... _Civil!_ Of course! Civil _what_? Miriam groaned. She was a governess now. Someone would ask her that question. She would ask Pater before he went.... No, she would not.... If only he would answer a question simply, and not with a superior air as if he had invented the thing he was telling about. She felt she had a right to all the knowledge there was, without fuss ... oh, without fuss--without fuss and--emotion.... I _am_ unsociable, I suppose--she mused. She could not think of anyone who did not offend her. I don't like men and I loathe women. I am a misanthrope. So's Pater. He despises women and can't get on with men. We are different--it's us, him and me. He's failed us because he's different and if he weren't we should be like other people. Everything in the railway responded and agreed. Like other people ... horrible.... She thought of the fathers of girls she knew--the Poole girls, for instance, they were to be "independent" trained and certificated--she envied that--but her envy vanished when she remembered how heartily she had agreed when Sarah called them "sharp" and "knowing." Mr. Poole was a business man ... common ... trade.... If Pater had kept to Grandpa's business they would be trade, too--well-off, now--all married. Perhaps as it was he had thought they would marry. 7