y under your sharp little nose. But the
fact is I FORGET half the time that Ida's your sainted mother."

"So do I!" said Maisie, her mouth full of bread and butter and to put
him the more in the right.

Her protectress, at this, was upon her again. "The little desolate
precious pet!" For the rest of the conversation she was enclosed in Mrs.
Wix's arms, and as they sat there interlocked Sir Claude, before them
with his tea-cup, looked down at them in deepening thought. Shrink
together as they might they couldn't help, Maisie felt, being a very
large lumpish image of what Mrs. Wix required of his slim fineness.
She knew moreover that this lady didn't make it better by adding in a
moment: "Of course we shouldn't dream of a whole house. Any sort of
little lodging, however humble, would be only too blest."

"But it would have to be something that would hold us all," said Sir
Claude.

"Oh yes," Mrs. Wix concurred; "the whole point's our being together.
While you're waiting, before you act, for her ladyship to take some
step, our position here will come to an impossible pass. You don't
know what I went through with her for you yesterday--and for our poor
darling; but it's not a thing I can promise you often to face again. She
cast me out in horrible language--she has instructed the servants not to
wait on me."

"Oh the poor servants are all right!" Sir Claude eagerly cried.

"They're certainly better than their mistress. It's too dreadful that I
should sit here and say of your wife, Sir Claude, and of Maisie's own
mother, that she's lower than a domestic; but my being betrayed into
such remarks is just a reason the more for our getting away. I shall
stay till I'm taken by the shoulders, but that may happen any day. What
also may perfectly happen, you must permit me to repeat, is that she'll
go off to get rid of us."

"Oh if she'll only do that!" Sir Claude laughed. "That would be the very
making of us!"

"Don't say it--don't say it!" Mrs. Wix pleaded. "Don't speak of anything
so fatal. You know what I mean. We must all cling to the right. You
mustn't be bad."

Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he
pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful if I
leave the house before--before she has bolted? They'll say it was my
doing so that made her bolt."

Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no check
to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that--if you've done