Maggie carried out her resolve of calling on Mr.Toms.She did it one dark afternoon 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.