"Quarter of an hour they've been sitting at luncheon, Miss."
And her clothes! The aunts had said that she must buy what was necessary, and she had gone with Aunt Elizabeth to choose all the right things. They had, between them, bought all the wrong ones. Maggie had no idea of whether or no something suited her; a dress, a hat that would look charming upon any one else looked terrible upon her; she did not know what was the matter, but nothing became her!
Her new friend, Caroline Smith, laughing and chattering, tried to help her. Caroline had very definite ideas about dress, and indeed spent the majority of her waking hours in contemplation of that subject. But she had never, she declared, been, in all her life, so puzzled. She was perfectly frank.
"But it looks AWFUL, Maggie dear, and yesterday in the shop it didn't seem so bad, although that old pig wouldn't let us have it the way we wanted. It's just as it is with poor mother, who gets fatter and fatter, diet herself as she may, so that she can wear nothing at all now that looks right, and is only really comfortable in her night-dress. Of course you're not FAT, Maggie darling, but it's your figure—everything's either too long or too short for you. You don't mind my speaking so frankly, do you? I always say one's either a friend or not, and if one's a friend why then be as rude as you please. What's friendship for?"
They were, in fact, the greatest possible friends. Maggie had never possessed a girl-friend before. She had, in the first days of the acquaintance, been shy and very silent—she had been afraid of going too far. But soon she had seen that she could not go too far and could not say too much. She had discovered then a multitude of new happinesses.
There was nothing, she found, too small, too unimportant to claim Caroline's interest. Caroline wished to know everything, and soon Maggie disclosed to her many things that she had told to no other human being in her life before. It could not honestly be said that Caroline had many wise comments to make on Maggie's experiences. Her attitude was one of surprised excitement. She was amazed by the most ordinary incidents and conversations. She found Maggie's life quite incredible.
"You must stop me, Maggie, if I hurt your feelings. But really! ... Why, if poor father had treated me like that I'd have gone straight out of the house and never come back. I would indeed ... Well, here you are now, dear, and we must just see each other as often as ever we can!"
They made a strange contrast, Maggie so plain in her black dress with her hair that always looked as though it had been cut short like a boy's, her strong rough movements, and Caroline, so neat and shining and entirely feminine that her only business in the world seemed to be to fascinate, beguile and bewilder the opposite sex. Whatever the aunts may have thought of this new friendship, they said nothing. Caroline had her way with them as with every one else. Maggie wondered often as to Aunt Anne's, real thoughts. But Aunt Anne only smiled her dim cold smile, gave her cold hand into the girl's warm one and said, "Good afternoon, Caroline. I hope your father and mother are well." "They're dears, you know," Caroline said to Maggie; "I do admire your Aunt Anne; she keeps to herself so. I wish I could keep to myself, but I never was able to. Poor mother used to say when I was quite little, 'You'll only make yourself cheap, Carrie, if you go on like that. Don't make yourself cheap, dear.' But what I say is, one's only young once and the people who don't want one needn't have one."
Nevertheless there were, even in these very early days, directions into which Maggie did not follow her new friend. Young as she was in many things, in some ways she was very old indeed. She had been trained in another school from Caroline; she felt from the very first that upon certain questions her lovely friend was inexperienced, foolish and dangerously reckless. On the question of "men," for instance, Maggie, with clear knowledge of her father and her uncle, refused to follow Caroline's light and easy excursions. Caroline was disappointed; she had a great deal to say on the subject and could speak, she assured Maggie, from a vast variety of experience: "Men are all the same. What I say is, show them you don't care 'that' about them and they'll come after you. Not that I care whether they do or no. Only it's fun the way they go on. You just try, Maggie."
But Maggie had her own thoughts. They were not imparted to her friend. Nothing indeed appeared to her more odd than that Caroline should be so wise in some things and so foolish in others. She did not know that it was her own strange upbringing that gave her independent estimates and judgments.