Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/252

238 you in my life; but I make you the offer, and it 's to take or to leave. Your mother will never again have any more to do with you than if you were a kitchen-maid she had turned out for going wrong. Therefore, of course, I 'm your natural protector, and you 've a right to get everything out of me you can. Now 's your chance, you know—you 'll be a great fool if you don't. You can't say I don't put it before you—you can't say I ain't kind to you or that I don't play fair. Mind you never say that, you know—it would bring me down on you. I know what 's proper—I 'll take you again, just as I have taken you again and again and again. And I 'm much obliged to you for making up such a face."

She was conscious enough that her face indeed couldn't please him if it showed any sign—just as she hoped it did n't—of her sharp impression of what he now really wanted to do. Was n't he trying to turn the tables on her, hocuspocus her somehow into admitting that what would really suit her little book would be, after doing so much for good manners, to leave her wholly at liberty to arrange for herself? She began to be nervous again; it rolled over her that this was