When the Maybrights returned home from their disastrous picnic at Troublous Times Castle, Maggie and George brought up the rear. In consequence of their being some little way behind the others, Maggie did not at once know of the fact of Flower’s disappearance with the baby. She was naturally a slow girl; ideas came to her at rare intervals; she even received startling and terrible news with a certain outward stolidity and calm. Still, Maggie was not an altogether purposeless and thoughtless maiden; thoughts occasionally drifted her way; ideas, when once born in her heart, were slow to die. When affection took root there it became a very sturdy plant. If there was any one in the world whom Maggie adored, it was her dear young mistress, Miss Polly Maybright. Often at night Maggie awoke, and thought, with feelings of almost worship, of this bright, impulsive young lady. How delightful that week had been when she and Polly had cooked, and housekeeped, and made cakes and puddings together! Would any one but Polly have forgiven her for taking that pound to save her mother’s furniture? Would any one in all the world, except that dear, warm-hearted, impulsive Polly, have promised to do without a winter jacket in order to return that money to the housekeeping fund? Maggie felt that, stupid as she knew herself to be, slow as she undoubtedly was, she could really do great things for Polly. In Polly’s cause her brain could awake, the inertia which more or less characterized her could depart. For Polly she could undoubtedly become a brave and active young person.
She was delighted with herself when she assisted Miss Maybright to descend from her bed-room window, and to escape with her on to the moor, but her delight and sense of triumph had not been proof against the solitude of the sad moor, against the hunger which was only to be satisfied with berries and spring water, and, above all, against the terrible apparition of the wife of Micah Jones. What Maggie went, through in the hermit’s hut, what terrors she experienced, were only known to Maggie’s own heart. When, however, Mrs. Ricketts got back her daughter from that terrible evening’s experience, she emphatically declared that “Mag were worse nor useless; that she seemed daft-like, and a’most silly, and that never, never to her dying day, would she allow Mag to set foot on them awful lonely commons again.”
Mrs. Ricketts, however, was not a particularly obstinate character, and when Polly’s bright face peeped round her door, and Polly eagerly, and almost curtly, demanded that Maggie should that very moment accompany her on a delightful picnic to Troublous Times Castle, and Maggie herself,[Pg 114] with sparkling eyes and burning cheeks, was all agog to go, and was now inclined to pooh-pooh the terrors she had endured in the hermit’s hut, there was nothing for Mrs. Ricketts to do but to forget her vow and send off the two young people with her blessing.
“Eh, but she’s a dear young lady,” she said, under her breath, apostrophizing Miss Maybright. “And Mag do set wonderful store by her, and no mistake. It ain’t every young lady as ’ud think of my Maggie when she’s going out pleasuring; but bless Miss Polly! she seems fairly took up with my poor gel.”
No face could look more radiant than Maggie’s when she started for the picnic, but, on the other hand, no young person could look more thoroughly sulky and downcast than she did on her return. Mrs. Ricketts was just dishing up some potatoes for supper when Maggie flung open the door of the tiny cottage, walked across the room, and flung herself on a little settle by the fire.
“You’re hungry, Mag,” said Mrs. Ricketts, without looking up.
“No, I bean’t,” replied Maggie, shortly.
“Eh, I suppose you got your fill of good things out with the young ladies and gentlemen. It ain’t your poor mother’s way to have a bit of luck like that, and you never thought, I suppose, of putting a slice or two of plum cake, or maybe the half of a chicken, in your pocket, as a bit of a relish for your mother’s supper. No, no, that ain’t your way, Mag; you’re all for self, and that I will say.”
“No, I ain’t mother. You has no call to talk so. How could I hide away chicken and plum cake, under Miss Polly’s nose, so to speak. I was setting nigh to Miss Polly, mother, jest about the very middle of the feast. I had a place of honor close up to Miss Polly, mother.”
“Eh, to be sure!” exclaimed Mrs. Ricketts.
She stopped dishing up the potatoes, wiped her brow, and turned to look at her daughter, with a slow expression of admiration in her gaze.
“Eh,” she continued, “you has a way about you, Mag, with all your contrariness. Miss Polly Maybright thinks a sight on you, Mag; seems to me as if maybe she’d adopt you, and turn you into a real lady. My word, I have read of such things in story-books.”
“You had better go on dishing up your supper, mother and not be talking nonsense like that. Miss Polly is a very good young lady, but she hasn’t no thought of folly of that sort. Eh, dear me,” continued Maggie, yawning prodigiously “I’m a bit tired, and no mistake.”
“That’s always the way,” responded Mrs. Ricketts. “Tired and not a word to say after your pleasuring; no talking about what happened, and what Miss Helen wore, and if Miss Firefly has got on her winter worsted stockings yet, and not a mention of them foreigners as we’re all dying to hear[Pg 115] of, and not a word of what victuals you ate, nor nothing. You’r............