Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/53

Rh quiet little girls." The child could n't quite make out why her father's speech had been horrid, since it only expressed that appreciation which their companion herself, of old, described as "immense." To enter more into the truth of the matter she appealed to him again directly, asked if in all these months Miss Overmore had n't been with him just as she had been before and just as she would be now. "Of course she has, old girl, where else could the poor dear be?" cried Beale Farange, to the still greater scandal of their companion, who protested that unless he straightway "took back" his nasty, wicked fib, it would be, this time, not only him she would leave, but his child, too, and his house and his tiresome troubles—all the impossible things he had succeeded in putting on her. Beale, under this frolic menace, took nothing back at all. He was indeed apparently on the point of repeating his assertion, but Miss Overmore instructed her little charge that she was not to listen to his bad jokes. She was to understand that a lady could n't stay with a gentleman that way without some awfully proper reason.

Maisie looked from one of her companions to the other; this was the freshest,