She could not talk about it at all, but she could slip out into the wet streets on a gusty October evening, and walk miles exulting in it, and in the light on the puddles and in the rain on her face, coming back, it must be admitted, with red cheeks and an excellent appetite.

It led her into strange absent silences and ways of liking to be alone, which gratified her mother and worried her father.

When Elfrida burned the gas of Sparta late in her own room, it was always her father who saw the light under the door, and who came and knocked and told her that it was after eleven, and high time she was in bed.
Mrs.Bell usually protested.

"How can the child reach any true development," she asked, "if you interfere with her like this ?" to which Mr.Bell usually replied that whatever she developed, he didn't want it to be headaches and hysteria.

Elfrida invariably answered, "Yes, papa," with complete docility; but it must be said that Mr.Bell generally knocked in vain, and the more perfect the submission of the daughterly reply the later the gas would be apt to burn.