"I'll come and fetch you to-morrow," said Katherine. "You shall stay with us until you're quite well, and then we'll find some work for you."
"Why are you good to me like this?" Maggie asked.
"I'm not good to you," Katherine answered, laughing. "It's simply selfish. It will be lovely for me having you with me."
"Oh, you don't know," said Maggie, throwing up her head.
"No, I don't think I'll come. I'm frightened. I'm not what you think. I'm untidy and careless and can't talk to strangers. Perhaps I'll lose you altogether as a friend if I come."
"You'll never do that," said Katherine, suddenly bending forward and kissing her. "I don't change about people. It's because I haven't any imagination, Phil says."
"I shall make mistakes," Maggie said. "I've never been anywhere. But I don't care. I can look after myself."
The thought of her three hundred pounds (which were no longer three hundred) encouraged her. She kissed Katherine.
"I don't change either," she said.
She had a strange conversation with Aunt Anne that night, strange as every talk had always been because of things left unsaid. They faced one another across the fireplace like enemies who might have been lovers; there had been from the very first moment of this meeting a romantic link between them which had never been defined. They had never had it out with one another, and they were not going to have it out now; but Maggie, who was never sentimental, wondered at the strange mixture of tenderness, pity, affection, irritation and hostility that she felt.