This will do very well"--she was good-natured
about the place and even presently added that it was charming. Then with
a rosier glow she made again her great point: "I'm free, I'm free!"
Maisie made on her side her own: she carried back her gaze to Mrs. Wix,
whom amazement continued to hold; she drew afresh her old friend's
attention to the superior way she didn't take that up. What she did take
up the next minute was the question of Sir Claude. "Where is he? Won't
he come?"
Mrs. Beale's consideration of this oscillated with a smile between the
two expectancies with which she was flanked: it was conspicuous, it
was extraordinary, her unblinking acceptance of Mrs. Wix, a miracle of
which Maisie had even now begun to read a reflexion in that lady's long
visage. "He'll come, but we must MAKE him!" she gaily brought forth.
"Make him?" Maisie echoed.
"We must give him time. We must play our cards."
"But he promised us awfully," Maisie replied.
"My dear child, he has promised ME awfully; I mean lots of things, and
not in every case kept his promise to the letter." Mrs. Beale's good
humour insisted on taking for granted Mrs. Wix's, to whom her attention
had suddenly grown prodigious. "I dare say he has done the same with
you, and not always come to time. But he makes it up in his own way--and
it isn't as if we didn't know exactly what he is. There's one thing he
is," she went on, "which makes everything else only a question, for us,
of tact.
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