She felt as if he were now looking at her very hard indeed, and also as if she had grown ever so much older. "I'll do anything in the world you ask me, papa."
He gave again, with a laugh and with his legs apart, his proprietary glance at his waistcoat and trousers. "That's a way, my dear, of saying 'No, thank you!' You know you don't want to go the least little mite. You can't humbug me!" Beale Farange laid down. "I don't want to bully you—I never bullied you in my life; but I make you the offer, and it's to take or to leave. Your mother will never again have any more to do with you than if you were a kitchenmaid she had turned out for going wrong. Therefore of course I'm your natural protector and you've a right to get everything out of me you can. Now's your chance, you know—you won't be half-clever if you don't. You can't say I don't put it before you—you can't say I ain't kind to you or that I don't play fair. Mind you never say that, you know—it would bring me down on you. I know what's proper. I'll take you again, just as I have taken you again and again. And I'm much obliged to you for making up such a face."
She was conscious enough that her face indeed couldn't please him if it showed any sign—just as she hoped it didn't—of her sharp impression of what he now really wanted to do. Wasn't he trying to turn the tables on her, embarrass her somehow into admitting that what would really suit her little book would be, after doing so much for good manners, to leave her wholly at liberty to arrange for herself? She began to be nervous again: it rolled over her that this was their parting, their parting for ever, and that he had brought her there for so many caresses only because it was important such an occasion should look better for him than any other. For her to spoil it by the note of discord would certainly give him ground for complaint; and the child was momentarily bewildered between her alternatives of agreeing with him about her wanting to get rid of him and displeasing him by pretending to stick to him. So she found for the moment no solution but to murmur very helplessly: "Oh papa—oh papa!"
"I know what you're up to—don't tell me!" After which he came straight over and, in the most inconsequent way in the world, clasped her in his arms a moment and rubbed his beard against her cheek. Then she understood as well as if he had spoken it that what he wanted, hang it, was that she should let him off with all the honours—with all the appearance of virtue and sacrifice on his side. It was exactly as if he had broken out to her: "I say, you little booby, help me to be irreproachable, to be noble, and yet to have none of the beastly bore of it. There's only impropriety enough for one of us; so you must take it all. Repudiate your dear old daddy—in the face, mind you, of his tender supplications. He can't be rough with you—it isn't in his nature: therefore you'll have successfully chucked him because he was too generous to be as firm with you, poor man, as was, after all, his duty." This was what he communicated in a series of tremendous pats on the back; that portion of her person had never been so thumped since Moddle thumped her when she choked. After a moment he gave her the further impression of having become sure enough of her to be able very gracefully to say out: "You know your mother loathes you, loathes you simply. And I've been thinking over your precious man—the fellow you told me about."
"Well," Maisie replied with competence, "I'm sure of him."
Her father was vague for an instant. "Do you mean sure of his liking you?"
"Oh no; of his liking her!"
Beale had a return of gaiety. "There's no accounting for tastes! It's what they all say, you know."
"I don't care—I'm sure of him!" Maisie repeated.
"Sure, you mean, that she'll bolt?"
Maisie knew all about bolting, but, decidedly, she was older, and there was something in her that could wince at the way her father made the ugly word—ugly enough at best—sound flat and low. It prompted her to amend his allusion, which she did by saying: "I don't know what she'll do. But she'll be happy."
"Let us hope so," said Beale—almost as for edification. "The more happy she is at any rate the less she'll want you about. That's why I press you," he agreeably pursued, "to consider this handsome offer—I mean seriously, you know—of your sole surviving parent." Their eyes, at this, met again in a long and extraordinary communion which terminated in his ejaculating: "Ah you little scoundrel!" She took it from him in the manner it seemed to her he would like best and with a success that encouraged him to go on: "You are a deep little devil!" Her silence, ticking like a watch, acknowledged even this, in confirmation of which he finally brought out: "You've settled it with the other pair!"
"Well, what if I have?" She sounded to herself most bold.
Her father, quite as in the old days, broke into a peal. "Why, don't you know they're awful?"
She grew bolder still. "I don't care—not a bit!"
"But they're probably the worst people in the world and the very greatest criminals," Beale pleasantly urged. "I'm not the man, my dear, not to let you know it."
