Page:Lolly Willowes - 1926.djvu/14

 Sibyl's eyes glowed; but she said:

"Oh no, Lolly, I couldn't think of taking it. Why, it's a family ring."

When Fancy Willowes had grown up, and married, and lost her husband in the war, and driven a lorry for the Government, and married again from patriotic motives, she said to Owen Wolf-Saunders, her second husband:

"How unenterprising women were in the old days! Look at Aunt Lolly. Grandfather left her five hundred a year, and she was nearly thirty when he died, and yet she could find nothing better to do than to settle down with Mum and Dad, and stay there ever since."

"The position of single women was very different twenty years ago," answered Mr. Wolf-Saunders. "Feme sole, you know, and feme couverte, and all that sort of rot."

Even in 1902 there were some forward spirits who wondered why that Miss Willowes, who was quite well off, and not likely to marry, did not make a home for herself and take up something artistic or emancipated. Such possibilities did not occur to any of Laura's relations. Her father being dead, they took it for granted that she should be absorbed into the household of one brother or the other. And