"I'm
sure he thinks too hard," decided Maggie, who had habits of making
up her mind at once about people.
"Well, there's no one to be frightened about here," she decided. And
indeed there was not! It was as though they had all some especial
reason for being nice to her. Perhaps they saw that she was not in
her own world here. And yet they did not make her feel that. She
drank in the differences with great gulps of appreciation, but it
was not they who insisted.
Here were light and colour and space above all--rest. Nothing was
about to happen, no threat over their heads that the roof would fall
beneath one's feet, that the floor would sink. No sudden catching of
the breath at the opening of a door, no hesitation about climbing
the stairs, no surveillance by the watching Thomas, no distant
clanging of the Chapel bell. How strange they all seemed, looking
back from this safe harbour. The aunts, the Warlocks, Thurston, Mr.
Crashaw, Caroline--all of them. There the imagination set fire to
every twig--here the imagination was not needed, because everything
occurred before your eyes.
She did not figure it all out in so many words at once, but the
contrast of the two worlds was there nevertheless.
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