Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/228

214 as her own. That in turn was just puzzling enough to make Maisie express a bewilderment. She could n't see, if they were so intensely of the same mind, why the theory on which she had come back to Mrs. Beale—the general reunion, the delightful trio, should have broken down so in fact. Mrs. Beale, however, only gave her more to think about in saying that their disappointment was the result of his having got into his head a kind of idea.

"What kind of idea?"

"Oh, goodness knows!" She spoke with an approach to asperity. "He 's so awfully delicate."

"Delicate?"—that was ambiguous.

"About what he does, don't you know?" said Mrs. Beale. She made it clearer. "Well, about what we do."

Maisie wondered. "You and me?"

"Me and him, silly!" cried Mrs. Beale with, this time, a real giggle.

"But you don't do any harm—you don't," said Maisie, wondering afresh and intending her emphasis as a resigned allusion to her parents.

"Of course we don't, you angel—that 's just the ground I take!" her companion