isie had been in contact from
her earliest years--the sign of happy maturity, the old familiar note of
overflowing cheer. "How d'ye do, ma'am? How d'ye do, little miss?"--he
laughed and nodded at the gaping figures. "She has brought me up for a
peep--it's true I wouldn't take you on trust. She's always talking about
you, but she'd never produce you; so to-day I challenged her on the
spot. Well, you ain't a myth, my dear--I back down on that," the visitor
went on to Maisie; "nor you either, miss, though you might be, to be
sure!"

"I bored him with you, darling--I bore every one," Ida said, "and to
prove that you ARE a sweet thing, as well as a fearfully old one, I told
him he could judge for himself. So now he sees that you're a dreadful
bouncing business and that your poor old Mummy's at least sixty!"--and
her ladyship smiled at Mr. Perriam with the charm that her daughter had
heard imputed to her at papa's by the merry gentlemen who had so often
wished to get from him what they called a "rise." Her manner at that
instant gave the child a glimpse more vivid than any yet enjoyed of the
attraction that papa, in remarkable language, always denied she could
put forth.

Mr. Perriam, however, clearly recognised it in the humour with which he
met her. "I never said you ain't wonderful--did I ever say it, hey?" and
he appealed with pleasant confidence to the testimony of the schoolroom,
about which itself also he evidently felt something might be expected of
him. "So this is their little place, hey? Charming, charming, charming!"
he repeated as he vaguely looked round. The interrupted students clung
together as if they had been personally exposed; but Ida relieved their
embarrassment by a hunch of her high shoulders. This time the smile she
addressed to Mr. Perriam had a beauty of sudden sadness. "What on earth
is a poor woman to do?"

The visitor's grimace grew more marked as he continued to look, and
the conscious little schoolroom felt still more like a cage at a
menagerie. "Charming, charming, charming!" Mr. Perriam insisted; but
the parenthesis closed with a prompt click. "There you are!" said her
ladyship. "By-bye!" she sharply added. The next minute they were on the
stairs, and Mrs. Wix and her companion, at the open door and looking
mutely at each other, were reached by the sound of the large social
current that carried them back to their life.

It was singular perhaps after this that Maisie never put a question
a