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"I've had my supper at Mr. Lindsey's, mother," I said, as I dragged my bicycle out of the back-place. "I've just got to go out, whether I will or no, and I don't know when I'll be in, either do you think I can sleep in my bed when I don't know where Maisie is?" "You'll not do much good, Hugh, where the police have failed," she answered.
Maisie sat alone in her own room, thinking it over. She didn't know yet that Eliot had come. He had arrived while she was with Anne and she had missed him on the way to Barrow Farm, driving up by the hill road while he walked down through the fields. She didn't think of Jerrold all at once. Her mind was taken up with Anne and Anne's unhappiness. She could see nothing else.
She felt none the less for a moment at the bottom of a hole; then she seemed to see a way out. "But I didn't bring mamma together " She just faltered. "With all those gentlemen?" Mrs. Wix pulled her up. "No; it isn't quite so bad as that." "And even that wasn't much harm," threw in Mrs. Wix. "It wasn't much good," Maisie was obliged to recognise. "She can't bear him not even a mite.
He had a way of getting at things, you couldn't tell how. "What d'you mean? What are you talking about?" His words came with a sudden sharp rapidity. "You know what I mean." "I don't know how you know anything. And, as a matter of fact, you don't." "I don't know much. But I know enough to see that you two can't go on like this." "Maisie and me?" "No. You and Anne. It's Anne I'm talking about.
"That's just what I'm here to make known how perfectly the poor lady comes up to them herself." She held up her head at the child. "You must take your mamma's message, Maisie, and you must feel that her wishing me to come to you with it this way is a great proof of interest and affection. She sends you her particular love and announces to you that she's engaged to be married to Sir Claude."
Sir Claude set down his tea-cup; he had become more grave and he pensively wiped his moustache. "Won't all the world say I'm awful if I leave the house before before she has bolted? They'll say it was my doing so that made her bolt." Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no check to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that if you've done it for so high a motive?
"I wouldn't mind if it wasn't for Jerry. I ought never to have married him." "But, Maisie, I can't understand it. You're always so happy and calm. How can you be calm and happy with that hanging over you?" "I've got to be calm for fear of it. And I'm happy because Jerrold's there. Simply knowing that he's there.... I can't think what I'd do, Anne, if he wasn't such an angel. Some men wouldn't be.
This problem of Maisie would at least divert him besides, he had promised to do what he could for Adair. He noted the Chelsea address and reread the contents with its sly humility and hint of coquetry: "I have been given to understand that you are exceedingly anxious to make my acquaintance. If this is so, I shall be at home when you call to-morrow afternoon."
'I'm sorry, he said, 'and I think you make a mistake. But what's the idea of your new picture? 'I took it from a book. 'That's bad, to begin with. And 'It's this, said the red-haired girl behind him. 'I was reading it to Maisie the other day from The City of Dreadful Night. D'you know the book? 'A little. I am sorry I spoke. There are pictures in it. What has taken her fancy?
Nothing so dreadful of course could be final or even for many minutes prolonged: they rushed together again too soon for either to feel that either had kept it up, and though they went home in silence it was with a vivid perception for Maisie that her companion's hand had closed upon her.
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