Maggie had witnessed this scene with gathering anger. The implied reproaches against her father–her father, who was lying there in a sort of living death–neutralized all her pity for griefs about tablecloths and china; and her anger on her father's account was heightened by some egoistic resentment at Tom's silent concurrence with her mother in shutting her out from the common calamity. She had become almost indifferent to her mother's habitual depreciation of her,but she was keenly alive to any sanction of it, however passive, that she might suspect in Tom. poor Maggie was by no means made up of unalloyed devotedness,but put forth large claims for herself where she loved strongly. She burst out at last in an agitated, almost violent tone: "Mother, how can you talk so; as if you cared only for things with your name on, and not for what has my father's name too; and to care about anything but dear father himself!–when he's lying there, and may never speak to us again. Tom, you ought to say so too; you ought not to let any one find fault with my father."