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Released from the child's arms Mrs. Wix looked about for the picture; then she fixed Miss Overmore with a hard dumb stare; and finally, with her eyes on the little girl again, achieved the grimmest of smiles. "Well, nothing matters, Maisie, because there's another thing your mamma wrote about. She has made sure of me."
That's one, only one, but charming so far as it goes, of about a hundred things we love her for." Then he pursued to Mrs. Wix: "What I can't for the life of me make out is what Ida is REALLY up to, what game she was playing in turning to you with that cursed cheek after the beastly way she has used you.
Wix, poor dear I do her absolute justice. I respect her; I see what she means; she has done me a lot of good. But there are the facts. There they are, simply. And here am I, and here are you. And she won't come round. She's right from her point of view.
"She's got her lines to show" So the lady had been saying, shortly before Michael came into the bar. "But she won't have them long, if you put your mind on making her give 'em up. You can do it, Wix." She seemed to have a strong faith in the convict's cunning. He appeared to ponder over it, saying finally: "Right you are, Juliar! I see my way." "What are you going to do?" "That's tellings.
He had pushed the things before him a little way and had his elbows on the table. This time, she was convinced, she knew what was coming, and once more, for the crash, as with Mrs. Wix lately in her room, she held her breath and drew together her eyelids. He was going to say she must give him up. He looked hard at her again; then he made his effort. "Should you see your way to let her go?"
Then he roused himself to say: "Well, young shaver, what the office for you? that's the point! Look you now are you going home?" "Quite as like as not. That don't commit me to nothing, neither way. Spit it out, guv'nor!" Mr. Wix was filling a pipe, and did it to his satisfaction before he answered: "You've to carry a message. A message to Aunt M'riar. Got that? You know Aunt M'riar."
Wix called it, of combined amusement and instruction. They rode on the top of 'buses; they visited outlying parks; they went to cricket-matches where Maisie fell asleep; they tried a hundred places for the best one to have tea. This was his direct way of rising to Mrs. Wix's grand lesson of making his little accepted charge his duty and his life.
He spoke of other matters beside, especially of what she must tell him of the occupations, while he was away, of Mrs. Wix and her pupil. Hadn't they had the good time he had promised? had he exaggerated a bit the arrangements made for their pleasure?
Wix, whom at this moment and even in the whirl of her transit Maisie saw, very red, exchange a quick queer look with Sir Claude. The impression of the look remained with her, confronting her with such a critical little view of her mother's explosion that she felt the less ashamed of herself for incurring the reproach with which she had been cast off.
This was utilised ingeniously for the establishment of alibi's, the name of Wix being adopted by both. Daverill had, however, really behaved in a very shady way, having achieved this man's execution for a capital crime of his own.
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