She hesitated.  “It’s this way,” she said.  “Sometimes I can’t think of anything else.  I can sit and sit at it for weeks on end.  I don’t want anything else.  Then, all of a sudden, something comes over me, and I can’t put in another stitch.  Sometimes—­when it comes—­I’m that tired, it’s as if I ’ad weights on me arms, and I couldn’t ’old them up to sew.  And sometimes, again, I’m that restless, it’s as if you’d lit a fire under me feet.  I’m frightened,” said Maggie, “when I feel it coming.  But I’m only tired now.”

She broke off; but by the expression of her face, he saw that her thoughts ran underground.  He wondered where they would come out again.

“I haven’t seen anybody this time,” said Maggie, “for six months.”

“Not even Mr. Mumford?”

“Oh, no, not him.  I don’t want to see him.”  And her thoughts ran back to where they started from.

“It hasn’t come lately,” said Maggie, “it hasn’t come for quite a long time.”

“What hasn’t come?”

“What I’ve been telling you—­what I’m afraid of.”

“It won’t come, Maggie,” he said quickly. (He might have been her father or the doctor.)

“If it does, it’ll be worse now.”

“Why should it be?”

“Because I can’t get away from it.  I’ve nowhere to go to.  Other girls have got their friends.  I’ve got nobody.  Why, Mr. Majendie—­think—­there isn’t a place in this whole town where I can go to for a cup of tea.”

“You’ll make friends.”

She shook her head, guarding her little air of tragic wisdom.

Mrs. Morse popped her head in at the door, and out again.

“Is that woman kind to you?”

“Yes, very kind.”

“She looks after you well?”

“Looks after me?  I don’t want looking after.”

“Takes care of you, I mean.  Gives you plenty of nice nourishing things to eat?”

“Yes, plenty of nice things.  And she comes and sits with me sometimes.”

“You like her?”

“I love her.”

“That’s all right.  You see, you have got a friend, after all.”

“Yes,” said Maggie mournfully; and he saw that her thoughts were with Gorst.  “But it isn’t the same thing, is it?”

Majendie could not honestly say it was; so he smiled, instead.

“It’s a shame,” said she, “to go on like this when you’ve been so good to me.”

“If I wasn’t, you couldn’t do it, could you?  But what you want me to understand is that, however good I’ve been, I haven’t made things more amusing for you.”

“No, no,” said Maggie vehemently, “I didn’t mean that.  Indeed I didn’t.  I only wanted you to know—­”

“How good you’ve been.  Is that it?  Well, because you’re good, there’s no reason why you should be dull.  Is there?”

“I don’t know,” said Maggie simply.

“See here, supposing that, instead of sending me all you earn, you keep some of it to play with?  Get Mrs. What’s-her-name to go with you to places.”