Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/79

Rh her pupil, but her face, lighted with the irony that made it prettier even than ever before, was presented to the dingy figure that had stiffened itself for departure. The child's discipline had been bewildering: it had ranged freely between the prescription that she was to answer when spoken to and the experience of lively penalties on obeying that prescription. This time, nevertheless, she felt emboldened for risks; above all as something still more bewildering seemed to have leaped into her sense of the relations of things. She raised to Miss Overmore's face all the timidity of her eyes. "Do you mean papa's hold on me? Do you mean he 's about to marry?"

"Papa is not about to marry; papa is married, my dear. Papa was married the day before yesterday at Brighton." Miss Overmore glittered more gayly. On the spot it came over Maisie, and quite dazzlingly, that her pretty governess was a bride. "He 's my husband, if you please, and I 'm his little wife. So now we 'll see who 's your little mother!" She caught her pupil to her bosom in a manner that was not to have been outdone by the emissary of her predecessor, and a few minutes later, when