Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/326

312 alone; why should you put yourself out?" Mrs. Wix demanded.

"Oh, she 's an idiot—she 's incapable. If anything should happen to her it would be awkward; it was I who brought her—without her asking. If I turn her away I ought with my own hand to place her exactly where I found her."

Mrs. Wix's face appealed to Maisie on such folly, and her manner, as directed to their companion, had, to her pupil's surprise, an unprecedented sharpness. "Dear Sir Claude, I think you 're perverse. Pay her fare and give her a sovereign. She has had an experience that she never dreamed of and that will be an advantage to her through life. If she goes wrong on the way it will be simply because she wants to, and, with her expenses and her remuneration—make it even what you like!— you will have treated her as handsomely as you always treat every one."

This was a new tone—as new as Mrs. Wix's cap; and it could strike a perceptive person as the upshot of a relation that had taken on a new character. It brought out, for Maisie, how much more even than she had guessed her friends were fighting side