Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/204

190 high point. But this effort flurried her and all she could produce was: "At first, you know, I thought you were Lord Eric."

The Captain looked vague. "Lord Eric?"

"And then Sir Claude thought you were the Baron."

At this he resounded. "Why, the Baron's four foot high and as red as a lobster." Maisie laughed in return—the young lady at the ball certainly would—and was on the point, as conscientiously, of pursuing the subject with an agreeable question. But before she could speak her companion asked her one. "Who in the world 's Lord Eric?"

"Don't you know him?"—she judged her young lady would say that with light surprise.

"Do you mean a fat man with his mouth always open?" She had to confess that their acquaintance was so limited that she could only describe the bearer of the name as a friend of mamma's; but a light suddenly came to the Captain, who quickly asserted that he knew her man. "What-do-you-call-him's brother—the fellow that owned 'Bobolink'?" Then, with all his niceness, he contradicted her flat. "Oh, dear no—your mother never knew him."

"But Mrs. Wix said so," the child risked.