Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. I, 1889.djvu/69

 "Very well," cried the father in shrill irritation, "why doesn't she take the change that's offered to her? She's no need to go neither to workroom nor to bar. There's a good home waiting for her, isn't there? What's come to the girl? She used to go on as if she liked you well enough."

"A girl alters a deal between fifteen and seventeen," Sidney replied, forcing himself to speak with an air of calmness, of impartiality. "She wasn't old enough to know her own mind. I'm tired of plaguing her. I feel ashamed to say another word to her, and that's the truth. She only gets more and more set against me. If it's ever to come right, it'll have to be by waiting; we won't talk about that any more. Think of her quite apart from me, and what I've been hoping. She's seventeen years old. You can't deal with a girl of that age like you can with Amy and Annie. You'll have to trust her, Mr. Hewett. You'll have to, because there's no help for it. We're working people, we are; we're the lower orders; our