Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/457

Rh and Mrs. Wix would say. On the way over to the station she had even a mental picture of the stepfather and the pupil established in a little place in the south while the governess and the stepmother, in a little place in the north, remained linked by a community of blankness and by the endless theme of intercourse it would afford. The Paris papers had come in, and her companion, with a strange extravagance, bought no less of them than nine: it took up time while they hovered at the bookstall on the restless platform, where the little volumes in a row were all yellow and pink and one of her favorite old women, in one of her favorite old caps, absolutely wheedled him into the purchase of three. They had thus so much to carry home that it would have seemed simpler, with such a provision for a nice straight journey through France, just to "nip," as she phrased it to herself, into the coupé of the train that, a little further along, stood waiting to start. She asked Sir Claude where it was going.

"To Paris. Fancy!"

She could fancy well enough. They stood there and smiled, he with all the newspapers under his arm and she with the three books,