Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/50

would really have been a case for chloroform. It was a hug that fortunately left nothing to say, for the poor woman's want of words, at such an hour, seemed to fall in with her want of everything. Maisie's alternate parent, in the outermost vestibule—he liked the impertinence of crossing as much as that of his late wife's threshold—stood over them with his open watch and his still more open grin, while from the only corner of an eye on which something of Mrs. Wix's did n't impinge the child saw at the door a brougham in which Miss Overmore also waited. She remembered the difference when, six months before, she had been torn from the breast of that more spirited protectress. Miss Overmore, then also in the vestibule, but of course in the other one, had been thoroughly audible and voluble. Her protest had rung out bravely, and she had declared that something—her pupil didn't know exactly what—was a regular wicked shame. That had at the time dimly recalled to Maisie the far-away moment of Moddle's great outbreak—there seemed always to be "shame" connected in one way or another with her migrations. At present, while Mrs. Wix's arms tightened and the smell of her hair was