What Maisie Knew

'Am I going back to her?' Maisie brought out with a little gasp which was like a sudden clutch of the happy present.

It appeared to make Sir Claude grave a moment; it might have made him feel the weight of the pledge his action had given. 'Oh some day, I suppose! We've plenty of time.'

'I've such a tremendous lot to make up,' Maisie said with a sense of great boldness.

'Certainly, and you must make up every hour of it. Oh I'll see that you do!'

This was encouraging; and to show cheerfully that she was reassured she replied: 'That's what Mrs. Wix sees too.'

'Oh yes,' said Sir Claude; 'Mrs. Wix and I are shoulder to shoulder.'

Maisie took in a little this strong image; after which she exclaimed: 'Then I've done it also to you and her—I've brought you together!'

'Blest if you haven't!' Sir Claude laughed. 'And more, upon my word, than any of the lot. Oh you've done for us! Now if you could—as I suggested, you know, that day—only manage me and your mother!'

The child wondered. 'Bring you and her together?'

'You see we're not together—not a bit. But I oughtn't to tell you such things; all the more that you won't really do it—not you. No, old chap,' the young man continued; 'there you'll break down. But it won't matter—we'll rub along. The great thing is that you and I are all right.'

'We're all right!' Maisie echoed devoutly. But the next moment, in the light of what he had just said, she asked: 'How shall I ever leave you?' It was as if she must somehow take care of him.

His smile did justice to her anxiety. 'Oh well, you needn't! It won't come to that.'

'Do you mean that when I do go you'll go with me?'

Sir Claude cast about. 'Not exactly 'with' you perhaps; but I shall never be far off.'

'But how do you know where mamma may take you?'

He laughed again. 'I don't, I confess!' Then he had an idea, though something too jocose. 'That will be for you to see—that she shan't take me too far.'

'How can I help it?' Maisie enquired in surprise. 'Mamma doesn't care for me,' she said very simply. 'Not really.' Child as she was, her little long history was in the words; and it was as impossible to contradict her as if she had been venerable.

Sir Claude's silence was an admission of this, and still more the tone in which he presently replied: 'That won't prevent her from—some time or other—leaving me with you.'

'Then we'll live together?' she eagerly demanded.

'I'm afraid,' said Sir Claude, smiling, 'that that will be Mrs. Beale's real chance.'

Her eagerness just slightly dropped at this; she remembered Mrs. Wix's pronouncement that it was all an extraordinary muddle. 'To take me again? Well, can't you come to see me there?'

'Oh I dare say!'

Though there were parts of childhood Maisie had lost she had all childhood's preference for the particular promise. 'Then you will come—you'll come often, won't you?' she insisted; while at the moment she spoke the door opened for the return of Mrs. Wix. Sir Claude hereupon, instead of replying, gave her a look which left her silent and embarrassed.

When he again found privacy convenient, however—which happened to be long in coming—he took up their conversation very much where it had dropped. 'You see, my dear, if I shall be able to go to you at your father's it yet isn't at all the same thing for Mrs. Beale to come to you here.' Maisie gave a thoughtful assent to this proposition, though conscious she could scarcely herself say just where the difference would lie. She felt how much her stepfather saved her, as he said with his habitual amusement, the trouble of that. 'I shall probably be able to go to Mrs. Beale's without your mother's knowing it.'

Maisie stared with a certain thrill at the dramatic element in this. 'And she couldn't come here without mamma's—' She was unable to articulate the word for what mamma would do.

'My dear child, Mrs. Wix would tell of it.'

'But I thought,' Maisie objected, 'that Mrs. Wix and you—'

'Are such brothers-in-arms?'—Sir Claude caught her up. 'Oh yes, about everything but Mrs. Beale. And if you should suggest,' he went on, 'that we might somehow or other hide her peeping in from Mrs. Wix—'

'Oh, I don't suggest that!' Maisie in turn cut him short.

Sir Claude looked as if he could indeed quite see why. 'No; it would really be impossible.' There came to her from this glance at what they might hide the first small glimpse of something in him that she wouldn't have expected. There had been times when she had had to make the best of the impression that she was herself deceitful; yet she had never concealed anything bigger than a thought. Of course she now concealed this thought of how strange it would be to see him hide; and while she was so actively engaged he continued: 'Besides, you know, I'm not afraid of your father.'

'And you are of my mother?'

'Rather, old man!' Sir Claude returned.

XI

 

It must not be supposed that her ladyship's intermissions were not qualified by demonstrations of another order—triumphal entries and breathless pauses during which she seemed to take of everything in the room, from the state of the ceiling to that of her daughter's boot-toes, a survey that was rich in intentions. Sometimes she sat down and sometimes she surged about, but her attitude wore equally in either case the grand air of the practical. She found so much to deplore that she left a great deal to expect, and bristled so with calculation that she seemed