Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/47

Rh with quite the same tucked-in and kissed-for-good-night feeling. Mrs. Wix was as safe as Clara Matilda, who was in heaven, and yet, embarrassingly, also in Kensal Green, where they had been together to see her little huddled grave. It was from something in Mrs. Wix's tone, which, in spite of caricature, remained indescribable and inimitable, that Maisie, before her term with her mother was over, drew this sense of a tenderness that would never fail her. If she knew her instructress was poor and queer she also knew that she was not nearly so "qualified" as Miss Overmore, who could say lots of dates straight off (letting you hold the book yourself), state the position of Malabar, play six pieces without notes, and, in a sketch, put in beautifully the trees and houses and difficult parts. Maisie herself could play more pieces than Mrs. Wix, who was moreover visibly ashamed of her houses and trees and could only, with the help of a smutty forefinger, of doubtful legitimacy in the field of art, do the smoke coming out of the chimneys.

They dealt, the governess and her pupil, in "subjects;" but there were many the governess put off from week to week and