Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/189

strength of his empire to say that to shuffle away her sense of being duped he had only from under his lovely moustache to breathe upon it. It was somehow in the nature of plans to be expensive and in the nature of the expensive to be impossible. To be "involved" was of the essence of everybody's affairs, and also at every particular moment to be more involved than usual. This had been the case with Sir Claude's, with papa's, with mamma's, with Mrs. Beale's, and with Maisie's own at the particular moment, a moment of several weeks, that had elapsed since our young lady had been ree-stablished at her father's. There was n't "two-and-tuppence" for anything or for any one, and that was why there had been no sequel to the classes in French literature with all the smart little girls. It was devilish awkward, didn't she see? to try without even the modest sum mentioned to mix her up with a remote array that glittered before her after this as the children of the Rich. She was to feel henceforth as if she were flattening her nose upon the hard window-pane of the sweet-shop of knowledge. If the classes, however, that were select and accordingly the only ones were impossibly