Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/416

402 "Do you mean in her own room? " Maisie continued.

She waited an instant. "God knows!"

Maisie wondered a little why, or how, God should know; this, however, delayed but an instant her bringing out: "Well, won't she go back?"

"Go back? Never!"

"She 'll stay all the same?"

"All the more."

"Then won't Sir Claude go?" Maisie asked.

"Go back—if she doesn't?" Mrs. Wix appeared to give this question the benefit of a minute's thought. "Why should he have come—only to go back?"

Maisie produced an ingenious solution. "To make her go. To take her."

Mrs. Wix met it without a concession. "If he can make her go so easily, why should he have let her come?"

Maisie considered. "Oh, just to see me. She has a right."

"Yes—she has a right."

"She's my mother!" Maisie tentatively tittered.

"Yes—she 's your mother."

"Besides," Maisie went on, "he didn't