Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/93

Rh men.' Yes, I'm a family man; upon my honor I am!"

"Then why on earth," cried Mrs. Beale, "didn't you marry a family woman?"

Sir Claude looked at her hard. "You know whom one marries, I think. Besides, there are no family women—hanged if there are! None of them want any children—hanged if they do!"

His account of the matter was most interesting, and Maisie, as if it were of bad omen for her, stared at the picture in some dismay. At the same time she felt, through encircling arms, her protectress hesitate. "You do come out with things! But you mean her ladyship doesn't want any—really?"

"Won't hear of them—simply. But she can't help the one she has got." And with this Sir Claude's eyes rested on the little girl in a way that seemed to her to mask her mother's attitude with the consciousness of her own. "She must make the best of her, don't you see? If only for the look of the thing, don't you know, one wants one's wife to take the proper line about her child."

"Oh, I know what one wants!" Mrs. Beale declared with a competence that evidently impressed her interlocutor.