pouring with rain! You're soaking! You must change at once!
Did you go out to find something?"

Maggie made no answer. She stood there, her face sulky and closed, the
water dripping from her. Afterwards, as she changed her clothes, she
reflected that there had been many occasions during these three days
when her aunt would have felt irritation with her had she known her
longer. She had always realised that she was careless, that when she
should be thinking of one thing she thought of another, that her
housekeeping and management of shops and servants had been irregular
and undisciplined, but until now she had not sharply surveyed her
weaknesses. Since the coming of her aunt she had been involved in a
perfect network of little blunders; she had gone out of the room
without shutting the door, had started into the village on an errand,
and then, when she was there, had forgotten what it was; there had been
holes in her stockings and rents in her blouses. After Ellen's
departure she had endeavoured to help in the kitchen, but had made so
many mistakes that Aunt Anne and the kitchen-maid had been compelled to
banish her. She now wondered how during so many years she had run the
house at all, but then her father had cared about nothing so that money
was not wasted. She knew that Aunt Anne excused her mistakes just now
because of the shock of her father's death and the events that followed
it, but Maggie knew also that these faults were deep in her character.
She could explain it quite simply to herself by saying that behind the
things that she saw there was always something that she did not see,
something of the greatest importance and just beyond her vision; in her
efforts to catch this farther thing she forgot what was immediately in
front of her. It had always been so. Since a tiny child she had always
supposed that the shapes and forms with which she was presented were
only masks to hide the real thing. Such a view might lend interest to
life, but it certainly made one careless; and although Uncle Mathew
might understand it and put it down to the Cardinal imagination, she
instinctively knew that Aunt Anne, unless Maggie definitely attributed
it to religion, would be dismayed and even, if it persisted, angered.
Maggie had not, after all, the excuse and defence of being a dreamy
child. With her square body and plain face, her clear, unspeculative
eyes, her stolid movements, she could have no claim to dreams. With a
sudden d