Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/72

58 "Things not a bit more horrible, I think," Miss Overmore rejoined, "than those you, madam, appear to have come here to say about the father."

Mrs. Wix looked for a moment hard at Maisie; then, turning again to her other interlocutress, she spoke with a trembling voice. "I came to say nothing about him, and you must excuse Mrs. Farange and me if we are not as irreproachable as the companion of his travels."

The young woman thus described stared an instant at the audacity of the description—she apparently needed time to take it in. Maisie, however, gazing solemnly from one of the disputants to the other, observed that her answer, when it came, perched upon smiling lips. "It will do quite as well, no doubt, if you come up to the requirements of the companion of Mrs. Farange."

Mrs. Wix broke into a queer laugh—it sounded to Maisie like an unsuccessful imitation of a neigh. "That's just what I'm here to make known—how perfectly the poor lady comes up to them herself!" She straightened herself before the child. "You must take your mamma's message, Maisie, and you must feel that her wishing me to