It seemed that Maggie could not remember the things that she
was told: lighted lamps were left long after they should have been
extinguished, one night the bathroom was drowned in water by a
running tap, her clothes were not mended, she was never punctual at
meal-times. And yet no one could call her a dreamy child. She could,
about things that interested her, be remarkably sharp and
penetrating. She had a swift and often successful intuition about
characters; facts and details about places or people she never
forgot. She had a hard, severe, entirely masculine sense of
independence, an ironic contempt for sentimentality, a warm, ardent
loyalty and simplicity in friendship. Her carelessness in all the
details of life sprang from her long muddled years at St. Dreots,
the lack of a mother's guidance and education, the careless
selfishness of her father's disregard of her. She struggled, poor
child, passionately to improve herself. She sat for hours in her
room working at her clothes, trying to mend her stockings, the holes
in her blouses, the rip of the braid at the bottom of her skirt. She
waited listening for the cuckoo to call that she might be in exact
time for luncheon or dinner, and then, as she listened, some thought
would occur to her, and, although she did not dream, her definite
tracking of her idea would lead her to forget all time.
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