oo. Oh! you needn't look so
shocked, Grace. You know you think it, and every one else here thinks
it too. Now, Grace, confess. You're beginning to be horrified that Paul
married me."

"Please, Maggie--" said Paul, who hated scenes. Grace was always
flushed by a direct attack. Her eyes gazed in despair about her while
she plunged about in her mind.

"Maggie, you mustn't say such things--no, you mustn't. Of course it's
true that you've got more to learn than I thought. You ARE careless,
dear, aren't you? You remember yesterday that you promised to look in
at Pettits and get a reel of cotton, and then of course Mr. Toms is a
good little man--every one says so--but at the same time he's QUEER,
you must admit that, Maggie; indeed it wasn't really very long ago that
he asked Mrs. Maxse in the High Street to take all her clothes off so
that he could see what she was really made of. Now, that ISN'T nice,
Maggie, it's odd--you can't deny it. And if you'd only told me that you
hadn't been to Pettits I could have gone later myself."

"If it isn't one thing," said Maggie, "it's another. I may be a child
and careless, and not be educated, and have strange ideas, but if you
thought, Grace, that it was going to be just the same after Paul was
married as before you were mistaken. Three's a difficult number to
manage, you know."

"Oh, if you mean," said Grace, crimsoning, "that I'm better away, that
I should live somewhere else, please say so openly. I hate this
hinting. What I mean to say is I can leave to-morrow."

"My dear Grace," said Paul hurriedly, "whoever thought such a thing? We
couldn't get on without you. All that Maggie meant was that it takes
time to settle down. So it does."

"That isn't all I meant," said Maggie slowly. "I meant that I'm not
just a child as you both think. I've got a life of my own and ideas of
my own. I'll give way to you both in lots of things so long as it makes
you happy, but you're not--you're not going to shut me up as you'd like
to do to Mr. Toms."

Perhaps both Grace and Paul had a sharp troubling impression of having
caught some strange creature against their will. Maggie had risen from
the table and stood for the moment by the door facing them, her short
hair, standing thick about her head, contrasting with her thick white
neck, her body balanced clumsily but with great strength, like that of
a boy who has not yet grown to his full maturity. She tossed her head
back in a way that she ha