her
pendant, her lovely little necklace, and go dressed in drab like
the Wherrys: the unlovely uncombed Wherrys, who were the "poor"
to her? She did not.

She walked this Monday morning on the verge of misery. For
she did want to do what was right. And she didn't want to do
what the gospels said. She didn't want to be poor--really
poor. The thought was a horror to her: to live like the Wherrys,
so ugly, to be at the mercy of everybody.

"Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor."

One could not do it in real life. How dreary and hopeless it
made her!

Nor could one turn the other cheek. Theresa slapped Ursula on
the face. Ursula, in a mood of Christian humility, silently
presented the other side of her face. Which Theresa, in
exasperation at the challenge, also hit. Whereupon Ursula, with
boiling heart, went meekly away.

But anger, and deep, writhing shame tortured her, so she was
not easy till she had again quarrelled with Theresa and had
almost shaken her sister's head off.

"That'll teach you," she said, grimly.

And she went away, unchristian but clean.

There was something unclean and degrading about this humble
side of Christianity. Ursula suddenly revolted to the other
extreme.

"I hate the Wherrys, and I wish they were dead. Why does my
father leave us in the lurch like this, making us be poor and
insignificant? Why is he not more? If we had a father as he
ought to be, he would be Earl William Brangwen, and I should be
the Lady Ursula? What right have I to be poor? crawling
along the lane like vermin? If I had my rights I should be
seated on horseback in a green riding-habit, and my groom would
be behind me. And I should stop at the gates of the cottages,
and enquire of the cottage woman who came out with a child in
her arms, how did her husband, who had hurt his foot. And I
would pat the flaxen head of the child, stooping from my horse,
and I would give her a shilling from my purse, and order
nourishing food to be sent from the hall to the cottage."

So she rode in her pride. And sometimes, she dashed into
flames to rescue a forgotten child; or she dived into the canal
locks and supported a boy who was seized with cramp; or she
swept up a toddling infant from the feet of a runaway horse:
always imaginatively, of course.

But in the end there returned the poignant yearning from the
Sunday world. As she went down in the morning from Cossethay and
saw Ilkeston smoking blue and tender upon its