Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/448

434 "But I mean what will she do?"

"Oh, as for that, I won't pretend I know. I don't. We all have our difficulties."

That, to Maisie, was at this moment more striking than it had ever been. "Then who will teach me?"

Sir Claude laughed out. "What Mrs. Wix teaches?"

Maisie smiled dimly; she saw what he meant. "It isn't very, very much."

"It's so very, very little," he rejoined, "that that 's a thing we 've positively to consider. We probably should n't give you another governess. To begin with, we shouldn't be able to get one—not of the only kind that would do. It wouldn't do—the kind that would do," he queerly enough explained. "I mean they would n't stay—heigh-ho! We 'd do you ourselves. Particularly me. You see I can now; I haven't got to mind—what I used to. I won't fight shy as I did—she can show out with me. Our relation, all round, is more regular."

It seemed wonderfully regular, the way he put it; yet none the less, while she looked at it as judiciously as she could, the picture it made persisted somehow in being a combination quite distinct—an old woman