"Well, do you like it?" Maisie asked.
She actually had to wait, for oh her friend was embarrassed! "My
opposition to the connexion--theirs--would then naturally to some extent
fall. She has treated me to-day as if I weren't after all quite such a
worm; not that I don't know very well where she got the pattern of her
politeness. But of course," Mrs. Wix hastened to add, "I shouldn't like
her as THE one nearly so well as him."
"'Nearly so well!'" Maisie echoed. "I should hope indeed not." She spoke
with a firmness under which she was herself the first to quiver. "I
thought you 'adored' him."
"I do," Mrs. Wix sturdily allowed.
"Then have you suddenly begun to adore her too?"
Mrs. Wix, instead of directly answering, only blinked in support of her
sturdiness. "My dear, in what a tone you ask that! You're coming out."
"Why shouldn't I? YOU'VE come out. Mrs. Beale has come out. We each have
our turn!" And Maisie threw off the most extraordinary little laugh that
had ever passed her young lips.
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."