They said she was proud and conceited, that she was too
big for her shoes nowadays. They said, she needn't pretend,
because they knew what she was. They had known her since she was
born. They quoted this and that about her. And she was ashamed
because she did feel different from the people she had lived
amongst. It hurt her that she could not be at her ease with them
any more. And yet--and yet--one's kite will rise on
the wind as far as ever one has string to let it go. It tugs and
tugs and will go, and one is glad the further it goes, even it
everybody else is nasty about it. So Cossethay hampered her, and
she wanted to go away, to be free to fly her kite as high as she
liked. She wanted to go away, to be free to stand straight up to
her own height.

So that when she knew that her father had the new post, and
that the family would move, she felt like skipping on the face
of the earth, and making psalms of joy. The old, bound shell of
Cossethay was to be cast off, and she was to dance away into the
blue air. She wanted to dance and sing.

She made dreams of the new place she would live in, where
stately cultured people of high feeling would be friends with
her, and she would live with the noble in the land, moving to a
large freedom of feeling. She dreamed of a rich, proud, simple
girl-friend, who had never known Mr. Harby and his like, nor
ever had a note in her voice of bondaged contempt and fear, as
Maggie had.

And she gave herself to all that she loved in Cossethay,
passionately, because she was going away now. She wandered about
to her favourite spots. There was a place where she went
trespassing to find the snowdrops that grew wild. It was evening
and the winter-darkened meadows were full of mystery. When she
came to the woods an oak tree had been newly chopped down in the
dell. Pale drops of flowers glimmered many under the hazels, and
by the sharp, golden splinters of wood that were splashed about,
the grey-green blades of snowdrop leaves pricked unheeding, the
drooping still little flowers were without heed.

Ursula picked some lovingly, in an ecstasy. The golden chips
of wood shone yellow like sunlight, the snowdrops in the
twilight were like the first stars of night. And she, alone
amongst them, was wildly happy to have found her way into such a
glimmering dusk, to the intimate little flowers, and the splash
of wood chips like sunshine over the twilight of the ground. She
sat down on the felled tree