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"As your father's wedded wife? Utterly!" Miss Overmore replied. And the difference began of course in her being addressed, even by Maisie, from that day and by her particular request, as Mrs. Beale.
Masham was no more a hypocrite than old Maisie was an old cat. That is to say, if the latter designation meant a termagant or scold. There must be now and again, in Nature, a person without a hall-mark of either Heaven or Hell, and Mrs. Masham may have had none.
That confused image of a second mother, growing dimmer year by year in spite of a perfunctory system of messages maintained in the correspondence of the parted twins, had never utterly vanished; and it had clung about this workbox, a present from Maisie to Phoebe, even into these later years.
The next instant, with a laugh the least bit foolish, the young man slightly coloured: he must have felt this profession of innocence to be excessive as addressed to Maisie. It was inevitable to say to her, however, that of course her mother loathed the lady of the other house.
But she would not be soothed would say the thing she had set her mind to say, but failed to find the words or breath for. What was it she was trying to say? Was it about the letter? Elizabeth-next-door came into the room, tentatively. Ostensible reason, inquiry about breakfast; actual reason, curiosity. Sounds of speech under stress had aroused, and a glance at old Maisie intensified it.
Probably for most men words were not necessary; for them their happiness was herself. From her end of the couch Maisie smiled at Tabs dreamily. "You're persistent when you want anything. I suppose you always get your desires?" "The little things, yes," he replied. "But the big things they evade me." "You mean Terry."
Gwen read aloud as best she might, for the handwriting was none too visible. When she came to the writer's picturesque suggestion of his life of constant dodging and evasion of his pursuers, she softened nothing of his brutal phraseology. Maisie only said: "That is it. That is what I want." Phoebe was restless under its utterance, and murmured some protest.
"But maybe you're a regular born cook, too," argued Edith; "you can't tell if you never have tried." "Anyway, enter the contest just for fun," urged Maisie. "Everybody will help with the bazaar, and of course you want to be in it; and I want you to be in this contest, because all us girls are." "I'd just as lieve," said Dolly, "only there's no chance of our winning the prize."
By this time she was afraid of nothing. "I should think you'd be too proud to ask!" Mrs. Wix interposed. Mrs. Wix was herself conspicuously too proud. But at the child's words Mrs. Beale had fairly bounded. "Come away from ME, Maisie?"
It was scarcely necessary to feel his way as he moved about, for he knew everything so well. Then God was very kind: a deep sleep of weariness came upon him just as he would have thought of Maisie, and he slept till the steamer had cleared the mouth of the Thames and was lifting to the pulse of the Channel.
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