Carelessness! Strange ideas! Some one from the centre of Africa would have known more...and so on.Nevertheless, she was a GOODgirl...Only she needed guidance.Fancy, she had taken quite a fancy to poor Mr.Toms! Proposed to call on his sister.Well, one couldn't help that.Miss Toms was a regular communicant...
Nevertheless...she didn't realise, that was it.Of course, she had known all kinds of queer people in London.Paul and Grace had rescued her.The strangest people.No, Maggie was an orphan.She had an uncle, Grace believed, and two aunts who belonged to a strange sect.Sex? No, sect.Very queer altogether.
Mrs.Maxse went home greatly impressed.
"The girl's undoubtedly queer," she told her husband.
"The parson's got a queer sort of wife," Colonel Maxse told his friends in the Skeaton Conservative Club."He rescued her from some odd sort of life in London.No.Don't know what it was exactly.
Always was a bit soft, Trenchard."
Maggie had no idea that Skeaton was discussing her.She judged other people by herself.Meanwhile something occurred that gave her quite enough to think about.
She had understood from Grace that it was expected of her that she should be at home on one afternoon in the week to receive callers.
She thought it a silly thing that she should sit in the ugly drawing-room waiting for people whom she did not wish to see and who did not wish to see her, but she was told that it was one of her duties, and so she would do it.No one, however, had any idea of the terror with which she anticipated these Friday afternoons.She had never been a very great talker, she had nothing much to say unless to some one in whom she was interested.She was frightened lest something should happen to the tea, and she felt that they were all staring at her and asking themselves why her hair was cut short and why her clothes didn't fit better.However, there it was.It was her duty.