There passed Mrs. Wix's indeed the next moment a sound that more than
matched it. "You're most remarkable!" she neighed.
Her pupil, though wholly without aspirations to pertness, barely
faltered. "I think you've done a great deal to make me so."
"Very true, I have." She dropped to humility, as if she recalled her so
recent self-arraignment.
"Would you accept her then? That's what I ask," said Maisie.
"As a substitute?" Mrs. Wix turned it over; she met again the child's
eyes. "She has literally almost fawned upon me."
"She hasn't fawned upon HIM. She hasn't even been kind to him."
Mrs. Wix looked as if she had now an advantage. "Then do you propose to
'kill' her?"
"You don't answer my question," Maisie persisted. "I want to know if you
accept her."
Mrs. Wix continued to hedge. "I want to know if YOU do!"
Everything in the child's person, at this, announced that it was easy to
know. "Not for a moment."
"Not the two now?" Mrs. Wix had caught on; she flushed with it. "Only
him alone?"
"Him alone or nobody."
"Not even ME?" cried Mrs. Wix.
Maisie looked at her a moment, then began to undress. "Oh you're
nobody!"
XXIX
Her sleep was drawn out, she instantly recognised lateness in the way
her eyes opened to Mrs. Wix, erect, completely dressed, more dressed
than ever, and gazing at her from the centre of the room. The next thing
she was sitting straight up, wide awake with the fear of the hours of
"abroad" that she might have lost.
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