ground. He wondered where they would come out again.

"I haven't seen anybody this time," said Maggie, "for six months."

"Not even Mr. Mumford?"

"Oh, no, not him. I don't want to see him." And her thoughts ran back to
where they started from.

"It hasn't come lately," said Maggie, "it hasn't come for quite a long
time."

"What hasn't come?"

"What I've been telling you--what I'm afraid of."

"It won't come, Maggie," he said quickly. (He might have been her father
or the doctor.)

"If it does, it'll be worse now."

"Why should it be?"

"Because I can't get away from it. I've nowhere to go to. Other girls
have got their friends. I've got nobody. Why, Mr. Majendie--think--there
isn't a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea."

"You'll make friends."

She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom.

Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again.

"Is that woman kind to you?"

"Yes, very kind."

"She looks after you well?"

"Looks after me? I don't want looking after."

"Takes care of you, I mean. Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to
eat?"

"Yes, plenty of nice things. And she comes and sits with me sometimes."

"You like her?"

"I love her."

"That's all right. You see, you _have_ got a friend, after all."

"Yes," said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with
Gorst. "But it isn't the same thing, is it?"

Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead.

"It's a shame," said she, "to go on like this when you've been so good to
me."

"If I wasn't, you couldn't do it, could you? But what you want me to
understand is that, however good I've been, I haven't made things more
amusing for you."

"No, no," said Maggie vehemently, "I didn't mean that. Indeed I didn't.
I only wanted you to know--"

"How good _you_'ve been. Is that it? Well, because you're good, there's
no reason why you should be dull. Is there?"

"I don't know," said Maggie simply.

"See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep
some of it to play with? Get Mrs. What's-her-name to go with you to
places."

"I don't want to go to places," she said. "I want to send it all to you."

He lapsed again into his formula. "There really is no reason why you
should."

"I want to. That's a reason, isn't it?" said she. She said it shyly,
tentatively, solemnly almost, as if it were some point in an infant's
metaphysics. There