Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/307

Rh brushed by; he was not too grave to notice them. "Did she say anything else?"

"Oh, yes—a lot more."

On this he met her eyes again with some intensity; but he only repeated: "I see—I see."

Maisie had still her own vision, she brought out "I thought she was going to give me something."

"What kind of a thing?"

"Some money that she took out of her purse and then put back."

Sir Claude's amusement reappeared. "She thought better of it? Dear thrifty soul! How much did she make by that manœuvre?"

Maisie considered. "I did n't see. It was very small."

Sir Claude threw back his head. "Do you mean very little? Sixpence?"

Maisie resented this almost as much as if, at dinner, she were already bandying jokes with an agreeable neighbor. "It may have been a sovereign."

"Or even," Sir Claude suggested, "a tenpound note." She flushed at this sudden picture of what she perhaps had lost, and he made it more vivid by adding: "Rolled up in a tight little ball, you know—her way of