Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/249

Rh shake of his legs, a toss of his cigarette-ash and a fidgety look—he was forever taking one—all the length of his waistcoat and trousers, that she need n't be quite so disgusted. It helped her in a few seconds to appear more as he would like her that she saw, in the lovely light of the Countess's splendor, exactly, however she appeared, the right answer to make. "Dear papa, I 'll go with you anywhere."

He turned his back to her and stood with his nose at the glass of the chimneypiece while he brushed specks of ash out of his beard. Then he abruptly said: "Do you know anything about your brute of a mother?"

It was just of her brute of a mother that the manner of the question in a remarkable degree reminded her: it had the free flight of one of Ida's fine bridgings of space. With the sense of this was kindled for Maisie at the same time an inspiration. "Oh, yes, I know everything!"—and she became so radiant that her father, seeing it in the mirror, turned back to her and presently, on the sofa, had her on his knee again and was again particularly stirring. Maisie' s inspiration was to the effect that the more she should be able to say about mamma the less