Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/404

390 little that there was a rope or two Mrs. Wix might have thrown out if she would, or a rocket or two she might have sent up. They had, at any rate, never been so long together without communion or telegraphy, and their companion kept them apart by simply keeping them with her. From this situation they saw the grandeur of their intenser relation to her pass and pass like an endless procession. It was a day of lively movement and of talk, on Mrs. Beale's part, so brilliant and overflowing as to represent music and banners. She took them out with her, promptly, to walk and to drive, and even, towards night, sketched a plan for carrying them to the Établissement, where, for only a franc apiece, they would listen to a concert of celebrities. It reminded Maisie, the plan, of the side-shows at Earl's Court, and the franc sounded brighter than the shillings which had at that time failed; yet this too, like the other, was a frustrated hope: the francs failed like the shillings and the side-shows had set an example to the concert. The Établissement, in short, melted away, and it was little wonder that a lady who from the moment of her arrival had been so gallantly in the breach should