Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/301

Rh Nothing was less new to Maisie than the art of not thinking singly; so that at this instant she could both bring out what was on her tongue's end and weigh as to the object in her mother's palm, the question of its being a sovereign against the question of its being a shilling. No sooner had she begun to speak than she saw that within a few seconds this question would have been settled: she had foolishly arrested the rising word of the little speech of presentation to which, under the circumstances, even such a high pride as Ida's had had to give some thought. She had arrested it completely—that was the next thing she felt: the note she sounded brought into her companion's eyes a look that, quickly enough, seemed at variance with presentations.

"That was what the Captain said to me that day, mamma: I think it would have given you pleasure to hear the way he spoke of you."

The pleasure, Maisie could now in consternation reflect, would have been a long time coming if it had come no faster than the response evoked by her allusion to it. Her mother gave her one of the looks that slammed the door in her face: never, in a