her that no one was seriously
afraid of her father, and she turned round with a small toss of her
head. "Oh I dare say I can manage him!"

Sir Claude smiled, but she noted that the violence with which she had
just changed colour had brought into his own face a slight compunctious
and embarrassed flush. It was as if he had caught his first glimpse of
her sense of responsibility. Neither of them made a movement to get out,
and after an instant he said to her: "Look here, if you say so we won't
after all go in."

"Ah but I want to see Mrs. Beale!" the child gently wailed.

"But what if she does decide to take you? Then, you know, you'll have to
remain."

Maisie turned it over. "Straight on--and give you up?"

"Well--I don't quite know about giving me up."

"I mean as I gave up Mrs. Beale when I last went to mamma's. I couldn't
do without you here for anything like so long a time as that." It struck
her as a hundred years since she had seen Mrs. Beale, who was on the
other side of the door they were so near and whom she yet had not taken
the jump to clasp in her arms.

"Oh I dare say you'll see more of me than you've seen of Mrs. Beale.
It isn't in ME to be so beautifully discreet," Sir Claude said. "But
all the same," he continued, "I leave the thing, now that we're here,
absolutely WITH you. You must settle it. We'll only go in if you say so.
If you don't say so we'll turn right round and drive away."

"So in that case Mrs. Beale won't take me?"

"Well--not by any act of ours."

"And I shall be able to go on with mamma?" Maisie asked.

"Oh I don't say that!"

She considered. "But I thought you said you had squared her?"

Sir Claude poked his stick at the splashboard of the cab. "Not, my dear
child, to the point she now requires."

"Then if she turns me out and I don't come here--"

Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you, you naturally
enquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. I don't see it,
I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix."

His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean WE can't
make a little family?"

"It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your mother."

Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a slight sound of
reluctant assent which would certainly have been amusing to an auditor.
"Then there isn't anything else?"

"I vow I don't quite see what there is."

Maisie waited; her silence seemed to signify that she to