Sir Claude poked his stick at the splashboard of the cab. "Not, my dear
child, to the point she now requires."
"Then if she turns me out and I don't come here--"
Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you, you naturally
enquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. I don't see it,
I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix."
His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean WE can't
make a little family?"
"It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your mother."
Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a slight sound of
reluctant assent which would certainly have been amusing to an auditor.
"Then there isn't anything else?"
"I vow I don't quite see what there is."
Maisie waited; her silence seemed to signify that she too had no
alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. "If I come here
you'll come to see me?"
"I won't lose sight of you."
"But how often will you come?" As he hung fire she pressed him. "Often
and often?"
Still he faltered. "My dear old woman--" he began. Then he paused again,
going on the next moment with a change of tone. "You're too funny! Yes
then," he said; "often and often."
"All right!" Maisie jumped out. Mrs. Beale was at home, but not in the
drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the child suddenly
broke out: "But when I'm here what will Mrs. Wix do?"
"Ah you should have thought of that sooner!" said her companion with the
first faint note of asperity she had ever heard him sound.