Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/26

12 that the only spots in this long brightness were the moments of her wondering what would become of her if, on her coming back, there should be no Moddle on the bench. They still went to the Gardens, but there was a difference even there. She was impelled perpetually to look at the legs of other children and ask her nurse if they were toothpicks. Moddle was terribly truthful she always said: "Oh, my dear, you'll not find such another pair as your own!" It seemed to have to do with something else that Moddle often said: "You feel the strain—that's where it is; and you'll feel it still worse, you know."

Thus, from the first, Maisie not only felt it, but knew that she felt it. A part of it was the consequence of her father's telling her that he felt it too, and telling Moddle, in her presence, that she must make a point of driving that home. She was familiar, at the age of six, with the fact that everything had been changed on her account, everything ordered to enable him to give himself up to her. She was to remember always the words in which Moddle impressed upon her that he did so give himself: "Your papa wishes you never to forget, you know, that he has