opped.

She was too intent upon her own thoughts to notice this insufficiency.
"I find myself in life, and it terrifies me. I seem to be like a little
speck, whirling on a wheel, suddenly caught up. 'What am I here for?'
I ask. Simply to be here at a time--I asked it a week ago, I asked it
yesterday, and I ask it to-day. And little things happen and the days
pass. My stepmother takes me shopping, people come to tea, there is a
new play to pass the time, or a concert, or a novel. The wheels of the
world go on turning, turning. It is horrible. I want to do a miracle
like Joshua and stop the whirl until I have fought it out. At home--It's
impossible."

Mr. Hoopdriver stroked his moustache. "It IS so," he said in a
meditative tone. "Things WILL go on," he said. The faint breath of
summer stirred the trees, and a bunch of dandelion puff lifted among the
meadowsweet and struck and broke into a dozen separate threads against
his knee. They flew on apart, and sank, as the breeze fell, among the
grass: some to germinate, some to perish. His eye followed them until
they had vanished.

"I can't go back to Surbiton," said the Young Lady in Grey.

"EIGH?" said Mr. Hoopdriver, catching at his moustache. This was an
unexpected development.

"I want to write, you see," said the Young Lady in Grey, "to write Books
and alter things. To do Good. I want to lead a Free Life and Own myself.
I can't go back. I want to obtain a position as a journalist. I have
been told--But I know no one to help me at once. No one that I could
go to. There is one person--She was a mistress at my school. If I could
write to her--But then, how could I get her answer?"

"H'mp," said Mr. Hoopdriver, very grave.

"I can't trouble you much more. You have come--you have risked things--"

"That don't count," said Mr. Hoopdriver. "It's double pay to let me do
it, so to speak."

"It is good of you to say that. Surbiton is so Conventional. I am
resolved to be Unconventional--at any cost. But we are so hampered. If
I could only burgeon out of all that hinders me! I want to struggle, to
take my place in the world. I want to be my own mistress, to shape my
own career. But my stepmother objects so. She does as she likes herself,
and is strict with me to ease her conscience. And if I go back now, go
back owning myself beaten--" She left the rest to his imagination.

"I see that," agreed Mr. Hoopdriver. He MUST help her. Within his
skull he was doing some intricat