Her father in his anger had spoken about "their wicked blasphemy," "their insolence in the eyes of God," "their blindness and ignorant conceit." Maggie had discovered, on a later day, from her uncle that her aunts belonged to a sect known as the Kingscote Brethren and that the main feature of their creed was that they expected the second coming of the Lord God upon earth at no very distant date.
"Will it really happen, Uncle Mathew ?" she asked in an awe-struck voice when she first heard this.
"It's all bunkum if you ask me," said her uncle.

"And it's had a hardening effect on your aunts who were kind women once, but they're completely in the hands of the blackguard who runs their chapel, poor innocents.

I'd wring his neck if I caught him." All this was very fascinating to Maggie who was of a practical mind with regard to the facts immediately before her but had beyond them a lively imagination.

Her life had been so lonely, spent for the most part so far from children of her own age, that she had no test of reality.

She did not see any reason why the Lord God should not come again and she saw every reason why her aunts should condemn her uncle.
That London house swam now in a light struck partly from the wisdom and omniscience of her aunts, partly from God's threatened descent upon them.
Aunt Anne's name was no longer mentioned in St.Dreot's but Maggie did not forget, and at every new tyranny from her father she thought to herself--"Well, there is London.