A nod at Beatrice who held absolutely still. "She said she would come with me. She insisted on it. She stamped her little foot at me."
He pointed down to her toes as if she were a child yet.
Then he straightened his shoulders. "But I sent her back to the nursery, where she belonged, and told her to play with her dolls instead. As everyone knows, a female on a hunt is a distraction at best and bad luck at worse."

Which explained why Beatrice went into the woods with her hound alone, George thought. She looked now as though she had gone to some other place where she could not hear her father's words and thus could not be hurt by them. George wondered how often she was forced to go to that place.

Did King Helm not see how much she was like him? It seemed she was rejected for any sign of femininity yet also rejected for not showing enough femininity, How could she win?

Mette Ivie Harrison