Her professions and explanations were mixed with eager challenges and
sudden drops, in the midst of which Maisie recognised as a memory
of other years the rattle of her trinkets and the scratch of her
endearments, the odour of her clothes and the jumps of her conversation.
She had all her old clever way--Mrs. Wix said it was "aristocratic"--of
changing the subject as she might have slammed the door in your face.
The principal thing that was different was the tint of her golden hair,
which had changed to a coppery red and, with the head it profusely
covered, struck the child as now lifted still further aloft. This
picturesque parent showed literally a grander stature and a nobler
presence, things which, with some others that might have been
bewildering, were handsomely accounted for by the romantic state of her
affections. It was her affections, Maisie could easily see, that led Ida
to break out into questions as to what had passed at the other house
between that horrible woman and Sir Claude; but it was also just here
that the little girl was able to recall the effect with which in earlier
days she had practised the pacific art of stupidity. This art again came
to her aid: her mother, in getting rid of her after an interview in
which she had achieved a hollowness beyond her years, allowed her fully
to understand she had not grown a bit more amusing.
She could bear that; she could bear anything that helped her to feel she
had done something for Sir Claude.
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