Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/132

118 among her elders, Maisie had been in contact from her earliest years—the sign of happy maturity, the old familiar note of overflowing cheer. "How'd'ye do, ma'am, how'd'ye do, little miss?"—he laughed and nodded at the gaping figures. "She has brought me up for a peep—it's true I wouldn't take you on trust. She's always talking about you, but she would never produce you: so to-day I challenged her on the spot. Well, you ain't a myth, my dear; I back right down on that," the visitor went on to Maisie; "nor you, either, miss, though you might be, to be sure!"

"I bored him with you, darling—I bore every one," Ida said; "and to prove that you are a sweet thing, as well as a fearfully old one, I told him he could judge for himself. So now he sees that you 're a dreadful bouncing business and that your poor old mummy's at least sixty!"—and her ladyship smiled at Mr. Perriam with the charm that her daughter had heard imputed to her at papa's by the merry gentleman who had so often wished to get from him what they called a "rise." Her manner at that instant gave the child a glimpse more vivid than any yet enjoyed of the attraction that papa, in