Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/169

Rh Sir Claude made an odd sound which turned into a laugh. "Not, my dear child, to the point she now requires!"

"Then if she turns me out and I don't come here—?"

Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you? you naturally inquire. My poor chick, that 's just what I ask myself. I don't see it, I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix."

His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean we can't make a little family?"

"It's very base of me, no doubt—but I can't wholly chuck your mother."

Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a meagre note of reluctant assent, which would certainly have been amusing to an auditor. "Then there is n't anything else?"

"I vow I don't quite see what there is."

Maisie waited a moment. Her silence seemed to signify that she too had no alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. "If I come here you 'll come and see me?"

"I won't lose sight of you."

"But how often will you come?" As he