Yancie wasn't the only one who was surprised-her stepfather had looked startled too at the nastiness in his daughter's tone. Though before he could find his voice Yancie was proudly asserting. `I wouldn't dream of it! I've enough money from my allowance to…'

'The allowance you take from my father!' Estelle reminded her waspishly-and Yancie was left staring at her.

'I never asked for an allowance!' was the best defence Yancie could find.

'You don't mind taking it, though, do you?' Estelle attacked and that was when Yancie suddenly and abruptly realised that her stepfather's house was not big enough for both her and her stepsister. She'd had no idea that Estelle resented her so much!

'Not any more,' Yancie said quietly, and was on her way, in no mind to stay and listen to her stepfather transferring his crossness onto his daughter.

'Really, Estelle!' she heard him say as she left the drawing room and turned to close the door behind her. `You know full well that Yancie more than earns her allowance with the work she does keeping this place running smoothly.'

'Advertise for a housekeep-'

Yancie didn't wait to hear any more. She couldn't stay after this, she just couldn't! She went, where she and her cousins Fennia and Astra went in bad times and good; she went to see her aunt, Delia.

'I never did like Estelle Proctor,' Delia Alford opined when Yancie relayed all that had taken place.

'It is true, though.' Yancie tried to be fair. `I have never minded taking an allowance from Ralph.'

'You've worked for it!' Delia exclaimed, knowing positively how, four years ago, when, at aged eighteen, Yancie and her two cousins had left boarding-school, while the other two had gone into higher business training, Ralph Proctor had almost begged Yancie to stay home and take over the running of his over large house-her mother had sanctioned it, because it was what she termed `not a proper job'. `With that daughter of his picking fault all the time, you know as well as I that he couldn't keep a housekeeper for five minutes. And Estelle won't want to take over-the only comfort that jealous madam's interested in, is her own.'