"AM I to tell him?" the
child went on. It was then that her companion addressed her in the
unmistakeable language of a pair of eyes of deep dark grey. "I can't say
No," they replied as distinctly as possible; "I can't say No, because
I'm afraid of your mamma, don't you see? Yet how can I say Yes after
your papa has been so kind to me, talking to me so long the other day,
smiling and flashing his beautiful teeth at me the time we met him in
the Park, the time when, rejoicing at the sight of us, he left the
gentlemen he was with and turned and walked with us, stayed with us for
half an hour?" Somehow in the light of Miss Overmore's lovely eyes that
incident came back to Maisie with a charm it hadn't had at the time, and
this in spite of the fact that after it was over her governess had never
but once alluded to it. On their way home, when papa had quitted them,
she had expressed the hope that the child wouldn't mention it to mamma.
Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked by her,
that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and wonderingly
conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection
of what papa had said to Miss Overmore: "I've only to look at you to see
you're a person I can appeal to for help to save my daughter." Maisie's
ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn't diminish the pleasure
of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them
cling together as in some wild game of "going round.
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