Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/202

188 me to come to you," Maisie explained as they went; and presently she was close to him in one of the chairs, with the prettiest of pictures, the sheen of the lake through other trees before them and the sound of birds, the splash of boats, the play of children in the air. The Captain, inclining his military person, sat sideways, to be closer and kinder, and as her hand was on the arm of her seat he put his own down on it again to emphasize something he had to say that would be good for her to hear. He had already told her how her mother, from the moment of seeing her so unexpectedly with a person who was—well, not at all the right person, had promptly asked him to take charge of her while she herself tackled, as she said, the real culprit. He gave the child the sense of doing for the moment what he liked with her; ten minutes before she had never seen him, but she now could sit there touching him, impressed by him and thinking it nice when a gentleman was thin and brown—brown with a kind of clear depth that made his straw-colored moustache almost white and his eyes resemble little pale flowers. The most extraordinary thing was the way she did n't seem for the time to mind Sir