There had been many days when life had been unpleasant, and in the
last year, as his miserliness had grown upon him, his ill-temper at
any fancied extravagance had been almost that of an insane man, but
Maggie knew very little of the affairs of other men and it seemed to
her that every one had some disadvantage with which to grapple. She
did not pretend to care for her father, she was very lonely because
the villagers hated him, but she had always made the best of
everything because she had never had an intimate friend to tell her
that that was a foolish thing to do.

It was indeed marvellous how isolated her life had been; she knew
simply nothing about the world at all.

She could not pretend that she was sorry that her father had died;
and yet she missed him because she knew very well that she was now
no one's business, that she was utterly and absolutely alone in the
universe. It might be said that she could not be utterly alone when
she had her Uncle Mathew, but, although she was ignorant of life,
she knew her Uncle Mathew . . . Nevertheless, he did something to
remove the sharp alarm of her sudden isolation. Upon the day after
her father's death he was at his very best, his kindest, and most
gentle. He was rather pathetic, having drunk nothing out of respect
to the occasion; he felt, somewhere deep down in him, a persistent
exaltation that his brother Charles was dead, but he knew that it
was not decent to allow this feeling to conquer him and he was truly
anxious to protect and comfort his niece so well as he was able.
Early in the afternoon he suggested that they should go for a walk.
Everything necessary had been done. An answer to their telegram had
been received from his sister Anne that she could not leave London
until that night but would arrive at Clinton St. Mary station at