remembered the feeling and passion with which her aunt had repeated
the Twenty-third Psalm. She was puzzled.

A moment of shrinking came upon her as she thought of the coming
London life.

Then the service was over. The villagers, with that inevitable
disappointment that always lingers after a funeral, went to their
homes. The children remained until night, under the illusion that it
was Sunday.

Maggie spent the rest of the day, for the most part, alone in her
room and thinking of her father. Her bedroom, an attic with a
sloping roof, contained all her worldly possessions. In part because
she had always been so reserved a child, in part because there had
been no one in whom she might confide even had she wished it, she
had always placed an intensity of feeling around and about the few
things that were hers. Her library was very small, but this did not
distress her because she had never cared for reading. Upon the
little hanging shelf above her bed (deal wood painted white, with
blue cornflowers) were The Heir of Redclyffe, a shabby blue-covered
copy, Ministering Children, Madame How and Lady Why, The Imitation
of Christ, Robinson Crusoe, Mrs. Beeton's Cookery Book, The Holy
Bible, and The Poems of Longfellow. These had been given her upon
various Christmasses and birthdays. She did not care for any of them
except The Imitation of Christ and Robinson Crusoe. The Bible was
spoilt for her by incessant services and Sunday School classes; The
Heir of Redclyffe and Ministering Children she found absurdly
sentimental and unlike any life that she had ever known; Mrs. Beeton
she had never opened, and Longfellow and Kingsley's Natural History