Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/230

216 him how little she made of such a danger. Had n't she lived with her eyes on it from her third year? It was the condition most frequently discussed at the Faranges', where the word was always in the air and where at the age of five, amid rounds of applause, she could gabble it off. She knew as well in short that a person could be compromised as that a person could be slapped with a hairbrush or left alone in the dark, and it was equally familiar to her that each of these ordeals was in general held to have too little effect. But the first thing was to make absolutely sure of Mrs. Beale. This was done by saying to her thoughtfully: "Well, if you don't mind—and you really don't, do you?"

Mrs. Beale, with a dawn of amusement, considered. "Mixing you up? Not a bit. For what does it mean?"

"Whatever it means, I don't in the least mind being mixed. Therefore if you don't and I don't," Maisie continued, "don't you think that when I see him this evening I had better just tell him we don't and ask him why in the world he should?"