I hope your father and mother are well." "They're dears, you know," Caroline said to Maggie; "I do admire your Aunt Anne; she keeps to herself so.

I wish I could keep to myself, but I never was able to.

Poor mother used to say when I was quite little, 'You'll only make yourself cheap, Carrie, if you go on like that.

Don't make yourself cheap, dear.' But what I say is, one's only young once and the people who don't want one needn't have one." Nevertheless there were, even in these very early days, directions into which Maggie did not follow her new friend.

Young as she was in many things, in some ways she was very old indeed.