Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/107

a blood-relation, was little enough the woman to be capable of. Even to the hard heart of childhood there was something tragic in such elation at such humanities: it brought home to Maisie the way her humble companion had sidled and ducked through life. But it settled the question of the degree to which Sir Claude was a gentleman: he was more of one than anybody else in the world—"I don't care," Mrs. Wix repeatedly remarked, "whom you may meet in grand society, nor even to whom you may be contracted in marriage." There were questions that Maisie never asked, so her governess was spared the embarrassment of telling her if he were more of a gentleman than papa; that was not moreover from the want of opportunity, for there were no moments between them at which the topic could be irrelevant—no subject they were going into, not even the principal dates or the auxiliary verbs, in which it was further off than the turn of the page. The answer, on the winter nights, to the puzzle of cards and counters and little bewildering pamphlets was just to draw up to the fire and talk about him; and if the truth must be told this edifying interchange constituted for the time the little girl's chief education.