It was almost impossible to see through her tears by the time they reached the end of the street and then, when they were in the country, she wiped them away, ashamed of her own weakness.
“Now don’t go and upset yourself,” Farmer Brown was saying. “If things don’t go right, then you just come home and we’ll find a place for you somehow.”
It was what she wanted to hear, but it did not make her feel any less like crying.
When they reached the Station, she thanked Farmer Brown again and again.
He found a porter for her and instructed him to see her into a suitable carriage and she waved and waved until Farmer Brown had driven off and was out of sight.
‘That is the end of my childhood,’ Lola thought.
Then, almost as if her father was there beside her, she thought she heard him say,
“Not
