Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/168

154 Maisie turned it over. "Straight on—and give you up?"

"Well—I don't quite know about giving me up."

"I mean as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to mamma's. I could n't do without you here for anything like so long a time as that." It struck her as a hundred years since she had seen Mrs. Beale, who was on the other side of the door they were so near and whom she yet had not taken the jump to clasp in her arms.

"Oh, I dare say you 'll see more of me than you 've seen of Mrs. Beale. It is n't in me to be so beautifully discreet," Sir Claude said. "But all the same," he continued, "I leave the thing, now that we 're here, absolutely with you. You must settle it. We 'll only go in if you say so. If you don't say so, we 'll turn right round and drive away."

"So that in that case Mrs. Beale won't take me?"

"Well—not by any act of ours."

"And I shall be able to go on with mamma?" Maisie asked.

"Oh, I don't say that!"

She considered. "But I thought you said you had squared her."