Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/125

Rh away in peals of natural laughter. Not even in the old days of the convulsed ladies had she heard mamma laugh so freely as in these moments of conjugal surrender, to the gayety of which even a little girl could see she had at last a right—a little girl whose thoughtfulness was now all happy, selfish meditation on good omens and future fun.

Unaccompanied, in subsequent hours, and with an effect of changing to meet a change, Ida took a tone superficially disconcerting and abrupt—the tone of having, at an immense cost, made over everything to Sir Claude and wishing others to know that if everything was n't right it was because Sir Claude was so dreadfully vague. "He has made from the first such a row about you," she said on one occasion to Maisie, "that I 've told him to do for you himself and try how he likes it—see? I 've washed my hands of you, I 've made you over to him; and if you 're discontented it's on him, please, you 'll come down. So don't haul poor me up—I assure you I 've worries enough." One of these, visibly, was that the spell rejoiced in by the schoolroom fire was already in danger of breaking; another was that she was finally forced to make no secret of her