n a few days before Christmas, moved, it must be
confessed, partly by a sense of exasperation with Grace. Grace had been
that day quite especially tiresome. She had a cold, and a new evening
dress had cost twice as much as it ought to have done. Mitch had broken
into eczema, and Mrs. Constantine had overruled her at a committee
meeting. With a flood of disconnected talk she had overwhelmed Maggie
until the girl felt as though her head had been thrust into a bag of
flour. Through it all there had been an undercurrent of complaint as
though Maggie were responsible.

Early in the afternoon Grace declared that her head was splitting and
retired to her bedroom. Maggie, in a state of blinded and deafened
exasperation, remembered Mr. Toms and decided to call on him. She found
a neat little house standing in a neat little garden near the sea just
beyond the end of the Promenade, or The Leas, as the real Skeatonian
always called it. Miss Toms and Mr. Toms were sitting in a very small
room with a large fire, a pale grey wallpaper, and a number of
brightly-painted wooden toys arranged on a shelf running round the
room. The toys were of all kinds--a farm, cows and sheep, tigers and
lions, soldiers and cannon, a church and a butcher's shop, little green
tufted trees, and a Noah's ark. Mr. Toms was sitting, neat as a pin,
smiling in an armchair beside the fire, and Miss Toms near him was
reading aloud.

Maggie saw at once that her visit embarrassed Miss Toms terribly. It
was an embarrassment that she understood perfectly, so like her own
feelings on so many occasions. This put her at once at her ease, and
she was the old, simple, direct Maggie, her face eager with kindness
and understanding. Mr. Toms smiled perpetually but shook hands like the
little gentleman he was.

Maggie, studying Miss Toms' face, saw that it was lined with
trouble--an ugly face, grave, severe, but brave and proud. Maggie
apologised for not coming before.

"I would have come--" she began.

"Oh, you needn't apologise," said Miss Toms brusquely. "They don't call
on us here, and we don't want them to."

"They don't call," said Mr. Toms brightly, "because they know I'm queer
in the head, and they're afraid I shall do something odd. They told you
I was queer in the head, didn't they?"

Strangely enough this statement of his "queerness," although it brought
a lump into Maggie's throat, did not disturb or confuse her.

"Yes," she said, "they did. I asked who