Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/121

Rh 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.