Page:What Maisie Knew (Chicago & New York, Herbert S. Stone & Co., 1897).djvu/66

quence of incurring a lively disapproval. It was this lady's view that Mr. Farange would n't care for it at all; and she ended by confessing—since her pupil pushed her—that she didn't care for it herself. She was furiously jealous, she said; and that circumstance was only a new proof of her disinterested affection. She pronounced Mrs. Wix's effusions moreover illiterate and unprofitable, and made no scruple of declaring it extraordinary that a woman in her senses should have placed the formation of her daughter's mind in such ridiculous hands. Maisie was well aware that the proprietress of the old brown dress and the old odd headgear was a very different class of person from Miss Overmore; but it was now brought home to her with pain that she was educationally quite out of the question. She was buried for the time beneath a conclusive remark of Miss Overmore's—"She's really beyond a joke!" This remark was made as that charming woman held in her hand the last letter that Maisie was to receive from Mrs. Wix; it was fortified by a decree abolishing the preposterous tie. "Must I then write and tell her—?" the child bewilderedly inquired. She grew pale at