The Combined Maze by May Sinclair

Ranny had received his first intimation that he was not a free man. And it had come upon him with something of a shock. He had made his burst for freedom five years ago, when he refused to be a Pharmaceutical Chemist in his father's shop, because he could not stand his father's ubiquity. And yet he was not free to leave his father's house; for he did not see how, as things were going, he could leave his mother. He was not free to ask his friends there either; not, that was to say, friends who were strangers to his father and the Headache. Above all, he was not free to ask Winny Dymond. He had thought he was, but his mother had made him see that he wasn't, because of his father's Headache; that he really ought not to expose the poor old Humming-bird to the rude criticism of people who did not know how good he was. That was what his mother, bless her! had been trying to make him see. And if it came to exposing, if this was to be a fair sample of their Sundays, if the Humming-bird was going to take the cake for queerness, what right had he to expose little Winny?

And would she stand it if he did? She might come once, perhaps, but not again. The Humming-bird would be a bit too much for her.