rs. Wix quietly applied her straighteners to Miss Overmore's flushed
beauty. "Well, miss, for a very important communication."

"Can't dear Mrs. Farange, as you so oddly call her, make her
communications directly? Can't she take the trouble to write to her only
daughter?" the younger lady demanded. "Maisie herself will tell you that
it's months and months since she has had so much as a word from her."

"Oh but I've written to mamma!" cried the child as if this would do
quite as well.

"That makes her treatment of you all the greater scandal," the governess
in possession promptly declared.

"Mrs. Farange is too well aware," said Mrs. Wix with sustained spirit,
"of what becomes of her letters in this house."

Maisie's sense of fairness hereupon interposed for her visitor. "You
know, Miss Overmore, that papa doesn't like everything of mamma's."

"No one likes, my dear, to be made the subject of such language as your
mother's letters contain. They were not fit for the innocent child to
see," Miss Overmore observed to Mrs. Wix.

"Then I don't know what you complain of, and she's better without them.
It serves every purpose that I'm in Mrs. Farange's confidence."

Miss Overmore gave a scornful laugh. "Then you must be mixed up with
some extraordinary proceedings!"

"None so extraordinary," cried Mrs. Wix, turning very pale, "as to say
horrible things about the mother to the face of the helpless daughter!"

"Things not a bit more horrible, I think," Miss Overmore returned, "than
those you, madam, appear to have come here to say about the father!"

Mrs. Wix looked for a moment hard at Maisie, and then, turning again to
this witness, spoke with a trembling voice. "I came to say nothing about
him, and you must excuse Mrs. Farange and me if we're not so above all
reproach as the companion of his travels."

The young woman thus described stared at the apparent breadth of the
description--she needed a moment to take it in. Maisie, however, gazing
solemnly from one of the disputants to the other, noted that her answer,
when it came, perched upon smiling lips. "It will do quite as well,
no doubt, if you come up to the requirements of the companion of Mrs.
Farange's!"

Mrs. Wix broke into a queer laugh; it sounded to Maisie an unsuccessful
imitation of a neigh. "That's just what I'm here to make known--how
perfectly the poor lady comes up to them herself." She held up her head
at the child. "You must take your mamma's mes