Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/63

Rh at her feet in the midst of scandalous pastimes.

The picture of these pursuits was what Miss Overmore took refuge in when the child tried timidly to ascertain if her father were in danger of feeling that he had too much of her. She evaded the point and only kicked up all around it the dust of Ida's heartlessness and folly, of which the supreme proof, it appeared, was the fact that she was accompanied on her journey by a gentleman whom, to be painfully plain about it, she had—well, "picked up." The only terms on which, unless they were married, ladies and gentlemen might, as Miss Overmore expressed it, knock about together, were the terms on which she and Mr. Farange had exposed themselves to possible misconception. She had indeed, as I have intimated, often explained this before, often said to Maisie: "I don't know what in the world, darling, your father and I should do without you; for you just make the difference, as I've told you, of making us perfectly proper." The child took, in the office it was so endearingly presented to her that she performed, a comfort that helped her to a sense of security even in the event