Somebody must be in authority,
and you'll have to do as you're told."

"I shan't! I don't care! You're only six years older than I am!"

And Gwen flounced out of the room in a rage. She ran upstairs, her
eyes smarting with hot tears of temper. She was disgusted with the
others for not taking the matter more to heart. How could Lesbia sit
reading so calmly, or the boys amuse themselves with their absurd
engine?

"They don't care like I do! I wish I could go without them!" she said
aloud.

The idea was an excellent one. What fun it would be to go alone, and
have Dick all to herself--no tiresome youngsters to claim his
attention, finger his books, and perhaps break his birds' eggs; not
even Lesbia to ask stupid questions about things any ordinary person
ought to know. She could easily tell Mrs. Chambers that her sister had
thought it too stormy for the little ones to venture, and probably Dr.
Chambers would drive her back in the gig.

"After all, Father never told me not to go!" she thought, "and
Beatrice is getting a perfect tyrant; I can't be expected to obey her
as if I were an infant. A girl in the Fifth is quite old enough to
decide things for herself, especially when she's as tall as I am!"

Gwen changed her dress, put on her best hair ribbon, her brooch, and
her locket, then peeped cautiously down the stairs. Although she felt
full of self-assertion, she had no wish to risk a further encounter
with Beatrice. All seemed quiet, so, donning hat and coat, she crept
to the cupboard where mackintoshes and galoshes were kept, and armed
herself to defy the weather. It was quite an easy matter to slip out
by the back door, and in less than ten seconds she was hurrying
through the village, chuckling at her own daring and cleverness. Thick
flakes were whirling everywhere: when she looked upwards they showed
as little dark patches against the neutral-tinted sky, but when they
passed the line of vision, each soft lump of crystals gleamed purest
white as it joined the ever-deepening mass below. Every gate and stump
and rubbish heap was a thing of beauty, glorified by the ethereal
covering of the snow; the dead clumps of ragwort by the road side, the
withered branches of oak, the shrivelled trails of bramble all seemed
transformed by the feathery particles into a species of fairyland.

As Gwen left the village, and took the path that led across the moor,
she seemed to walk into a cloud of whiteness that enclosed her and
s