Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/37

Rh "It does n't matter in the least, you know, what you think!" Mrs. Farange loudly replied; "and you had better, indeed, for the future, miss, learn to keep your thoughts to yourself!"

This was exactly what Maisie had already learned, and the accomplishment was just the source of her mother's irritation. It was of a horrid little critical system, a tendency, in her silence, to judge her elders that this lady suspected her, liking, as she did, for her own part, a child to be simple and confiding. She liked also to hear the report of the whacks she administered to Mr. Farange's character, to his pretensions to peace of mind; the satisfaction of dealing them diminished when nothing came back. The day was at hand, and she felt it, when she should feel more delight in hurling Maisie at him than in snatching her away; so much so that her conscience winced under the acuteness of a candid friend who had remarked that the real end of all their tugging would be that each parent would try to make the little girl a burden to the other—a sort of game in which a fond mother clearly wouldn't show to advantage. The prospect of not showing to advantage, a distinction in which she held