Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/309

Rh asking for no more news of what her mother had said; but she had no need of talk, for it seemed to her that without it her sense of everything overflowed. They smoked and smoked, and there was a sweetness in her stepfather's silence. At last he said: "Let us take another turn—but you must go to bed soon. Oh, you know, we 're going to have a system!" Their turn was back into the garden, along the dusky paths from which they could see the black masts and the red lights of boats and hear the calls and cries that evidently had to do with happy foreign travel; and their system was once more to get on beautifully in this further lounge without a definite exchange. Yet he finally spoke—he broke out as he tossed away the match from which he had taken a fresh light. "I must go for a stroll; I 'm in a fidget—I must walk it off." She fell in with this as she fell in with everything; on which he went on: "You go up to Miss Ash"—it was the name they had started. "You must see she 's not in mischief. Can you find your way alone?"

"Oh, yes; I 've been up and down seven times." She positively enjoyed the prospect of an eighth.