ousand ways he showed it, his extraordinary youth and inexperience in
spite of all that he had been and done. She felt older now than he and
she loved him the more for that. Most of all she longed to get him away
from this place where he was. Then one day little Abrams said to her:

"He'll never get well here."

"That's what I think," she said.

"Can't you carry him off somewhere? The country's the place for
him--somewhere in the South."

Her heart leapt.

"Oh, Glebeshire!" she cried.

"Well, that's not a bad place," he said. "That would pick him up."

At once she thought, night and day, of St. Dreot's. A very hunger
possessed her to get back there. And why not? For one thing, it would
be so much cheaper. Her money would not last for ever, and Mrs. Brandon
robbed her whenever possible. She determined that she would manage it.
At last, greatly fearing it, she mentioned it to him, and to her
surprise he did not scorn it.

"I don't care," he said, looking at her with that curious puzzled
expression that she often saw now in his eyes, "I'm sick of this room.
That's a bargain, Maggie, you can put me where you like until I'm well.
Then I'm off."

She had a strange superstition that Borhedden was fated to see her
triumph. She had wandered round the world and now was returning again
to her own home. She remembered a Mrs. Bolitho who had had the farm in
her day. She wrote to her, and two days later received a letter saying
that there was room for them at Borhedden if they wished.

She was now all feverish impatience. Dr. Abrams said that Martin could
be moved if they were very careful. All plans were made. Mrs. Brandon
and the ugly little doctor both seemed quite sorry that they were
going, and Emily even sniffed and wiped her eye with the corner of her
apron. The world seemed now to be turning a different face to Maggie.
Human beings liked her and were no longer suspicious to her as they had
been before.

She felt herself how greatly she had changed. It was as though, until
she had found Martin again, everything had been tied up in her,
constrained. She had been some one lost and desolate. Nevertheless, how
difficult these days were! Through all this time she spoke to him no
affectionate word nor touched him with an affectionate gesture. She was
simply a good-humoured companion, laughing at him, assuming, through it
all, an off-hand indifference that meant for her so difficult a
pretence that she thought he must d