“There was many wanted me. But I came to you, ma’am, because you seemed to sort of need me most. I dearly love looking after people. Old ladies and children. And gentlemen, if they’re ill enough,” Maggie said.
“You’re a good girl, Maggie.”
She had forgotten. The image of Maggie’s baby was dead, hidden, buried deep down in her mind. She closed her eyes. Her head was thrown back, motionless, ecstatic under Maggie’s flickering fingers as they plaited her thin wisps of hair.
Out of the peace of illness she entered on the misery and long labor of convalescence. The first time Maggie left her to dress herself she wept. She didn’t want to get well. She could see nothing in recovery but the end of privilege and prestige, the obligation to return to a task she was tired of, a difficult and terrifying task.
By summer she was up and (tremulously) about again.
XIV
She was aware of her drowsy, supine dependence on Maggie. At first her perishing self asserted itself in an increased reserve and arrogance. Thus she protected herself from her own censure. She had still a feeling of satisfaction in her exclusiveness, her power not to call on new people.
“I think,” Lizzie Pierce said, “you might have called on the Brailsfords.”
“Why should I? I should have nothing in common with such people.”
“Well, considering that Mr. Brailsford writes in The Spectator——”