Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/393

Rh worn at luncheon? If you 're as hungry as I am we must go right down."

Mrs. Wix stuck fast, but she met the question in a voice her pupil scarce recognized. "I wear mine."

Mrs. Beale, swallowing at one glance her bran-new bravery, which she appeared at once to refer to its origin and to follow in its flights, accepted this as conclusive. "Oh, but I 've not such a beauty!" Then she turned rejoicingly to Maisie. "I 've got a beauty for you, my dear."

"A beauty?"

"A love of a hat—in my luggage. I remembered that"—she nodded at the object on her stepdaughter's head—"and I've brought you one with a peacock's breast. It's the most gorgeous blue!"

It was too strange, this talking with her there already not about Sir Claude, but about peacocks—too strange for the child to have the presence of mind to thank her. But the felicity in which she had arrived was so proof against everything that Maisie felt more and more the depth of the purpose that must underlie it. She had a vague sense of its being abysmal, the spirit with which Mrs. Beale carried off the awkwardness, in the