I turn my head, but not my gaze. ''Richard,'' I say. He doesn''t answer. ''Richard!'' The woman reaches to me and unfastens the string of my bonnet and draws it from my head. She pats my hair, then takes up a lock of it and rubs it between her fingers.
''Quite fair,'' she says, in a sort of wonder. ''Quite fair, like gold almost.''
''Do you mean to sell it?'' I say then. ''Here, take it!'' I snatch at the lock she has caught up and rip it from its pins. ''You see,'' I say, when she winces, ''you cannot hurt me as much as I can hurt myself. Now, let me go.''
She shakes her head. ''You are growing wild, my dear, and spoiling your pretty hair. Haven''t I said? We don''t mean to harm you. Here is John Vroom, look; and Delia Warren, that we call Dainty: you shall think them cousins, I hope, in time. And Mr Humphry Ibbs: he has been waiting for you—have