Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/390

376 question of Sir Claude. "Where is he? Won't he come?"

Mrs. Beale's consideration of this oscillated, with a smile, between the two expectancies with which she was flanked: it was conspicuous, it was extraordinary, her unblinking acceptance of Mrs. Wix, a miracle of which Maisie had even now begun to read a reflection in that lady's long visage. "He 'll come, but we must make him!" she gayly brought forth.

"Make him?" Maisie echoed.

"We must give him time; we must play our cards. "

"But he promised us, awfully," Maisie replied.

"My dear child, he has promised me awfully; I mean lots of things, and not, in every case, kept his promise to the letter." Mrs. Beale's good humor insisted on taking for granted Mrs. Wix's, to whom her attention had suddenly grown prodigious. "I dare say he has done the same with you and not always come to time. But he makes it up in his own way; and it isn't as if we did n't know exactly what he is. There 's one thing he is," she went on, "which makes everything else only a question, for us, of