Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/65

Rh "Bad—?" Maisie echoed with wonder.

Her companion gave a queer little laugh at her tone. "He's ever so much younger—" But here she paused.

"Younger than you?"

Miss Overmore laughed again. It was the first time Maisie had seen her approach so nearly to a giggle. "Younger than—no matter whom! I don't know anything about him, and I don't want to!" she rather inconsequently added. "He's not my sort, and I'm sure, my own darling, he's not yours." And she repeated the embrace with which her colloquies with Maisie almost always terminated and which made the child feel that her affection at least was a gage of safety. Parents had come to seem precarious, but governesses were evidently to be trusted. Maisie' s faith in Mrs. Wix, for instance, had suffered no lapse from the fact that all communication with her was temporarily at an end. During the first weeks of their separation Clara Matilda's mamma had repeatedly and dolefully written to her, and Maisie had answered with an excitement qualified only by orthographical delays; but this correspondence had been duly submitted to Miss Overmore, with the final