It seemed that Maggie could not remember the things that she was told: lighted lamps were left long after they should have been extinguished, one night the bathroom was drowned in water by a running tap, her clothes were not mended, she was never punctual at meal-times.

And yet no one could call her a dreamy child.

She could, about things that interested her, be remarkably sharp and penetrating.

She had a swift and often successful intuition about characters; facts and details about places or people she never forgot.

She had a hard, severe, entirely masculine sense of independence, an ironic contempt for sentimentality, a warm, ardent loyalty and simplicity in friendship.