Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/235

Rh that 's the way they dress—the vulgarest of the vulgar!"

"They're coming back—they'll see us!" Maisie the next moment announced: and while her companion answered that this was exactly what she wanted, and the child returned "Here they are—here they are!" the unconscious objects of so much attention, with a change of mind about their direction, quickly retraced their steps and precipitated themselves upon their critics. Their unconsciousness gave Mrs. Beale time to leap, under her breath, to a recognition which Maisie caught.

"It must be Mrs. Cuddon!"

Maisie looked at Mrs. Cuddon hard—her lips even echoed the name. What followed was extraordinarily rapid—a minute of livelier battle than had ever yet, in so short a span at least, been waged round our heroine. The muffled shock—lest people should notice—was so violent that it was only for her later thought the steps fell into their order, the steps through which, in a bewilderment not so much of sound as of silence, she had come to find herself, too soon for comprehension and too strangely for fear, at the door of the Exhibition with her father. He