"
Maggie watched them all as though the whole business were far from
herself. She sat there, her hands folded on her lap, looking at the
mantelpiece with the ugly marble clock, the letter clip with old
soiled letters in it, the fat green vase with dusty everlastings.
Just as on the night when her uncle had come into her room she had
fancied that some one spoke to her, so now she seemed to hear:
"Ah, that's a nasty knock for you--a very nasty knock."
Her father had left all his money, with the exception of 300, Pounds
Sterling to Ellen the cook; Maggie did not, for a moment, speculate
as to the probable total amount. Three hundred pounds seemed to her
a very large sum--it would at any rate give her something to begin
life upon--but the thing that seized and held her was the secret
friendship that must have existed between her father and Ellen--
secret friendship was the first form that the relationship assumed
for her. She saw Ellen, red of face with little eyes and a flat nose
upon which flies used to settle, a fat, short neck, the wheezings
and the pantings, the stumping walk, the great broad back.
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