Wix perhaps in especial--by delicacy and even by
embarrassment. The end of her colloquy with her stepfather in the
schoolroom was her saying: "Then if we're not to see Mrs. Beale at all
it isn't what she seemed to think when you came for me."
He looked rather blank. "What did she seem to think?"
"Why that I've brought you together."
"She thought that?" Sir Claude asked.
Maisie was surprised at his already forgetting it. "Just as I had
brought papa and her. Don't you remember she said so?"
It came back to Sir Claude in a peal of laughter. "Oh yes--she said so!"
"And YOU said so," Maisie lucidly pursued.
He recovered, with increasing mirth, the whole occasion. "And YOU said
so!" he retorted as if they were playing a game.
"Then were we all mistaken?"
He considered a little. "No, on the whole not. I dare say it's just what
you HAVE done. We ARE together--it's really most odd. She's thinking of
us--of you and me--though we don't meet. And I've no doubt you'll find
it will be all right when you go back to her."
"Am I going back to her?" Maisie brought out with a little gasp which
was like a sudden clutch of the happy present.
It appeared to make Sir Claude grave a moment; it might have made him
feel the weight of the pledge his action had given. "Oh some day, I
suppose! We've plenty of time."
"I've such a tremendous lot to make up," Maisie said with a sense of
great boldness.
"Certainly, and you must make up every hour of it.
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