"I'll try," she whispered in a subdued tone.
[CHAPTER XV]
LIFE'S ONWARD MARCH
WEEKS and weeks had passed; all the long weeks of Merryl's acute danger, and of her slow recovery with its many drawbacks; and then of her absence at the sea-side with her mother. It seemed to Magda like years since the day that she had last called upon Patricia, for that short and disappointing interview from which she had hoped so much.
No one else had caught the fever; and it was now over a month that Mrs. Royston and Merryl had been away. The whole house had been thoroughly fumigated and disinfected; much painting and papering had taken place; and everything which could be suspected of conveying infection was destroyed. With the arrival of autumn, people were beginning to realise that the Roystons were once more "safe," though some of the more nervous still held aloof.
Mrs. Major and Bee had been for several weeks away from Burwood paying visits; otherwise, Magda could not doubt, she and Bee would have met. Not yet had she found opportunity to tell her mother about them; and she shrank from speaking first to her sister. Pen might set herself against the acquaintance, and might influence Mrs. Royston to refuse to call. A mistake again on the part of Magda!
The absentees were expected soon to return. Merryl was better, Mrs. Royston wrote, though not so much better as every one hoped; but they would not remain much longer away.
Patricia was among those who held longest aloof. If she chanced to meet any of the Roystons out-of-doors, she gave them a very wide berth; this, up to the last fortnight, during which she too had flitted elsewhere, Magda sometimes admitted to herself, though to no one else, that she in Patricia's place could not have shown quite such excessive caution to her greatest friend.
But was she Patricia's greatest friend? At one time she had felt sure. Doubts now troubled her often.
All these weeks of trouble, of anxiety, of self-searching, were good for Magda. It was one of those periods in life when one is taken apart from the ordinary round, and set upon a watch-tower on the mountainside, to gain new views of the landscape, new views of duty, new views of self. She had been compelled to pause, to think, to take stock of her own aims and objects, to examine her course. She had been humbled in her own eyes; had seen her failures; had made resolves for the future.