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156 hung fire she pressed him. "Often and often?"

Still he faltered. "My dear old woman!" he began; then he paused again, going on the next moment with a change of tone. "You're too funny! Yes, then," he said, "often and often."

"All right"—and Maisie jumped out of the cab. Mrs. Beale was at home, but not in the drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the child suddenly broke out: "But when I 'm here what will Mrs. Wix do?"

"Ah, you should have thought of that sooner!" said her companion with the first faint hint of asperity she had ever heard him produce.

 XIV

fairly swooped upon her, and the effect of the whole hour was to put before her how much, how quite formidably indeed after all, she was loved. This was the more the case as her stepmother, so changed—in the very manner of her mother—that she really struck her as a new 