Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/387

vain impulse, threw open the white and gold door. She was thus first to utter the sound that brought Mrs. Wix almost on the top of her, as, by the other accident, it would have brought her on the top of Mrs. Wix. It had at any rate the effect of leaving them bunched together in a strained stare at their new situation. This situation had put on, in a flash, the bright form of Mrs. Beale: she stood there in her hat and her jacket, amid bags and shawls, smiling and holding out her arms. If she had just arrived it was a different figure from either of the two that, for their benefit, wan and tottering and none too soon to save life, the Channel had recently disgorged. She was as lovely as the day that had brought her over, as fresh as the luck and the health that attended her; it came to Maisie on the spot that she was more beautiful than she had ever been. All this was too quick to count, but there was still time in it to give the child the sense of what had kindled the light. That leaped out of the open arms, the open eyes, the open mouth; it leaped out with Mrs. Beale's loud cry at her: "I 'm free, I 'm free!"