Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/138

124 and there were hours of late evening, when she had gone to bed, that Maisie knew he sat there talking with Mrs. Wix of how to meet his difficulties. His consideration for this unfortunate woman even in the midst of them continued to show him as the perfect gentleman and lifted the object of his courtesy into an upper air of beatitude in which her very pride had the hush of anxiety. "He leans on me—he leans on me!" she only announced from time to time; and she was more surprised than amused when, later on, she accidentally found she had given her pupil the impression of a support literally supplied by her person. This glimpse of a misconception led her to be explicit—to put before the child, with an air of mourning indeed for such a stoop to the common, that what they talked about in the small hours, as they said, was the question of his taking right hold of life. The life she wanted him to take right hold of was the public; "she," I hasten to add, was, in this connection, not the mistress of his fate, but only Mrs. Wix herself. She had phrases about him that were full of tenderness, yet full of morality. " He 's a wonderful nature, but he can't live like the lilies. He 's all right, you know, but he must have a