Of
course, however, instead of breathing any such guess she let Sir Claude
reply; all the more that his reply could contribute so much to her own
present grandeur. "She won't be alone when she has a maid in
attendance."
Maisie had never before had so much of a retinue, and she waited also to
enjoy the action of it on her ladyship. "You mean the woman you brought
from town?" Ida considered. "The person at the house spoke of her in a
way that scarcely made her out company for my child." Her tone was that
her child had never wanted, in her hands, for prodigious company. But
she as distinctly continued to decline Sir Claude's. "Don't be an old
goose," she said charmingly. "Let us alone."
In front of them on the grass he looked graver than Maisie at all now
thought the occasion warranted. "I don't see why you can't say it before
me."
His wife smoothed one of her daughter's curls. "Say what, dear?"
"Why what you came to say."
At this Maisie at last interposed: she appealed to Sir Claude. "Do let
her say it to me."
He looked hard for a moment at his little friend. "How do you know what
she may say?"
"She must risk it," Ida remarked.
"I only want to protect you," he continued to the child.
"You want to protect yourself--that's what you mean," his wife replied.
"Don't be afraid. I won't touch you."
"She won't touch you--she WON'T!" Maisie declared. She felt by this time
that she could really answer for it, and something of the emotion with
which she had listened to the Captain came back to her.
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