Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/36

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WHAT MAISIE KNEW

it was over her governess had never but once alluded to it. On their way home, when papa had quitted them, she had expressed the hope that the child wouldn't mention it to mamma. Maisie liked her so, and had so the charmed sense of being liked by her, that she accepted this remark as settling the matter and wonderingly conformed to it. The wonder now lived again, lived in the recollection of what papa had said to Miss Overmore. "I've only to look at you to see that you're a person to whom I can appeal to help me to save my daughter." Maisie's ignorance of what she was to be saved from didn't diminish the pleasure of the thought that Miss Overmore was saving her. It seemed to make them cling together.



III


She was therefore all the more startled when her mother said to her in connection with something to be done before her next migration: "You understand, of course, that she's not going with you."

Maisie turned quite faint. "Oh, I thought she was!"