She had with such readiness promised steady work in the future! And she had meant it too.
The thing seemed so easy beforehand. And for a time she really had tried. But she had not kept it up. She had not worked persistently. She had not "stuck" to her plans. The contrast between intention and non-fulfilment came upon her now with force.
Six months had gone by of home-life, of emancipation from school control. Six months of aimless drifting—the very thing she had resolved sturdily against.
"Oh, bother! What's the use of worrying? Why can't I take things as Pen does? Pen never seems to mind." But she was in the grip of a cogitative mood, and thinking would not be stayed.
She had begun well enough—had planned daily two hours of music, an hour of history, an hour of literature, an hour alternately of French and German. It had all looked fair and promising. And the whole had ended in smoke.
Something always seemed to come in the way. The children wanted a ramble. Or she was sent on an errand. Or a caller came in. Or there was an invitation. Or—oftener and worse!—disinclination had her by the throat.
Disinclination which, no doubt, might have been, and ought to have been, grappled with and overcome. Only, she had not grappled with it. She had not overcome. She had yielded, time after time.
It was so difficult to work alone; so dull to sit and read in her own room; so stupid to write a translation that nobody would see; so tiresome to practice when there was none to praise or blame. Not that she liked blame; and not that she was not expected to practice; but no marked interest was shown in her advance; and she wanted sympathy and craved an object. And it was so fatally easy to put off, to let things slide, to get out of the way of regular plans. The fact that any time would do equally well soon meant no time.
This had been a typical day; and she reviewed it ruefully. A morning of aimless nothings; the mending of clothes idly deferred; hours spent in the reading of a foolish novel; jars with Penrose; friction with her mother; a sharp set-down from her father; then forgetfulness of wrongs and resentment during a romp in the snow with Merryl and Frip—till the younger girls were summoned indoors, leaving her to descend at a plunge from gaiety to disquiet. Magda's variations were many.
She stood pondering the subject—a long-limbed well-grown girl, young in look for her years, with a curly mass of red-brown hair, seldom tidy, and a pair of expressive eyes. They could look gentle and loving, though that phase was not common; they could sparkle with joy or blaze with anger; they could be dull as a November fog; they could, as at this moment, turn their regards inwards with uneasy self-condemnation.