'Exactly,' cried Gudrun, 'a swan among geese.'

'They are all so busy playing the ugly duckling,' cried Ursula, with
mocking laughter. 'And I don't feel a bit like a humble and pathetic
ugly duckling. I do feel like a swan among geese--I can't help it. They
make one feel so. And I don't care what THEY think of me. FE M'EN
FICHE.'

Gudrun looked up at Ursula with a queer, uncertain envy and dislike.

'Of course, the only thing to do is to despise them all--just all,' she
said.

The sisters went home again, to read and talk and work, and wait for
Monday, for school. Ursula often wondered what else she waited for,
besides the beginning and end of the school week, and the beginning and
end of the holidays. This was a whole life! Sometimes she had periods
of tight horror, when it seemed to her that her life would pass away,
and be gone, without having been more than this. But she never really
accepted it. Her spirit was active, her life like a shoot that is
growing steadily, but which has not yet come above ground.




CHAPTER V.



IN THE TRAIN