Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/296

282 toggery in which Mrs. Beale's low domestic had had the impudence to serve up Miss Farange. She checked all criticism, not committing herself even as much as about those missing comforts of the schoolroom on which Mrs. Wix had presumed.

"I am good—I'm crazily, I 'm criminally good. But it won't do for you any more, and if I 've ceased to contend with him, and with you too, who have made most of the trouble between us, it 's for reasons that you 'll understand one of these days but too well—one of these days when I hope you 'll know what it is to have lost a mother. I 'm awfully ill, but you must n't ask me anything about it. If I don't get off somewhere my doctor won't answer for the consequences. He's stupefied at what I 've borne—he says it has been put on me because I was formed to suffer. I 'm thinking of South Africa, but that 's none of your business. You must take your choice—you can't ask me questions if you're so ready to give me up. No, I won't tell you: you can find out for yourself. South Africa is wonderful, they say, and if I do go it must be to give it a fair trial. It must be either one thing or the other; if he takes you, you know, he takes you. I 've struck