Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/175

Rh ask Mrs. Beale continued: "That's not all she came to do, if you please. But you 'll never guess the rest."

"Shall I guess it?" Maisie threw in.

Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why, you 're just the person! It must be quite the sort of thing you 've heard at your awful mother's. Have you never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men they love?"

Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly diverted. "Oh, they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you to spare me?"

"She regularly went down on her knees to me."

"The darling old dear!" the young man exclaimed.

These words were a joy to Maisie—they made up for his previous description of Mrs. Wix. "And will you spare him?" she asked of Mrs. Beale.

Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed with the tone of her question. "Not an inch of him! I 'll pick him to the bone!"

"You mean then he 'll really come often?" Maisie pressed.