The Rainbow

Ursula's heart sank. It was a cold, dreary satisfaction to

think of. Yet her cold will acquiesced. This was what she

wanted.

"You have an emotional nature," the letter went on, "a quick

natural response. If only you could learn patience and

self-discipline, I do not see why you should not make a good

teacher. The least you could do is to try. You need only serve a

year, or perhaps two years, as uncertificated teacher. Then you

would go to one of the training colleges, where I hope you would

take your degree. I most strongly urge and advise you to keep up

your studies always with the intention of taking a degree. That

will give you a qualification and a position in the world, and

will give you more scope to choose your own way.

"I shall be proud to see one of my girls win her own

economical independence, which means so much more than it seems.

I shall be glad indeed to know that one more of my girls has

provided for herself the means of freedom to choose for

herself."

It all sounded grim and desperate. Ursula rather hated it.

But her mother's contempt and her father's harshness had made

her raw at the quick, she knew the ignominy of being a

hanger-on, she felt the festering thorn of her mother's animal

estimation.

At length she had to speak. Hard and shut down and silent

within herself, she slipped out one evening to the workshed. She

heard the tap-tap-tap of the hammer upon the metal. Her father

lifted his head as the door opened. His face was ruddy and

bright with instinct, as when he was a youth, his black

moustache was cut close over his wide mouth, his black hair was

fine and close as ever. But there was about him an abstraction,

a sort of instrumental detachment from human things. He was a

worker. He watched his daughter's hard, expressionless face. A

hot anger came over his breast and belly.

"What now?" he said.

"Can't I," she answered, looking aside, not looking at him,

"can't I go out to work?"

"Go out to work, what for?"

His voice was so strong, and ready, and vibrant. It irritated

her.

"I want some other life than this."

A flash of strong rage arrested all his blood for a

moment.

"Some other life?" he repeated. "Why, what other life do you

want?"

She hesitated.

"Something else besides housework and hanging about. And I

want to earn something."

Her curious, brutal hardness of speech, and the fierce

invincibility of her youth, which ignored him, made him also

harden with anger.

"And how do you think you're going to earn anything?"

he asked.

"I can become a teacher--I'm qualified by my

matric."

He wished her matric. in hell.

"And how much are you qualified to earn by your matric.?" he

asked, jeering.