Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/302

288 career of unsuccessful experiments, had Maisie had to take such a stare. It reminded her of the way that once, at one of the lectures in Glower Street, something in a big jar that, amid an array of strange glasses and bad smells, had been promised as a beautiful yellow was produced as a beautiful black. She had been sorry on that occasion for the lecturer, but she was at this moment sorrier for herself. Oh, nothing had ever made for twinges like mamma's manner of saying: "The Captain? What captain?"

"Why, when we met you in the Gardens—the one who took me to sit with him. That was exactly what he said."

Ida met her so far as to appear for an instant to pick up a lost thread. "What on earth did he say?"

Maisie faltered supremely, but supremely she brought it out. "What you say, mamma. That you 're so good."

"What 'I' say? " Ida slowly rose, keeping her eyes on her child, and the hand that had busied itself in her purse conformed, at her side and amid the folds of her dress, to a certain stiffening of the arm. "I say you 're a precious idiot, and I won't have you