Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/243

Rh about anything." He paused, following the child's charmed eyes and tentative step or two as they brought her nearer to the pretty things on one of the tables. "She thinks she has good things, don't you know?" He quite jeered at Mrs. Beale's delusion.

Maisie felt she must confess that it was one: everything she had missed at the sideshows was made up to her by the Countess's luxuries. "Yes," she considered—"she does think that."

There was again a dryness in the way Beale replied that it didn't matter what she thought; but there was an increasing sweetness for his daughter in being with him so long without his doing anything worse. The whole hour, of course, was to remain with her for days and weeks, ineffaceably illumined and confirmed; by the end of which she was able to read into it a hundred things that were at the moment mere miraculous pleasantness. What they then and there came to was simply that her companion was still excited, yet wished not to show it, and that just in proportion as he succeeded in this attempt he was able to encourage her to regard him as kind. He moved about the room after a little; showed her things, spoke