His cheerful echo prolonged the happy truth, and Maisie
broke out almost with enthusiasm: “I’ve
brought you and her together!”
Her companions of course laughed anew and Mrs. Beale
gave her an affectionate shake. “You little
monster—take care what you do! But
that’s what she does do,” she continued
to Sir Claude. “She did it to me and Beale.”
“Well then,” he said to Maisie, “you
must try the trick at our place.”
He held out his hand to her again. “Will
you come now?”
“Now—just as I am?” She turned
with an immense appeal to her stepmother, taking a
leap over the mountain of “mending,” the
abyss of packing that had loomed and yawned before
her. “Oh may I?”
Mrs. Beale addressed her assent to Sir Claude.
“As well so as any other way. I’ll
send on her things to-morrow.” Then she
gave a tug to the child’s coat, glancing at
her up and down with some ruefulness.
“She’s not turned out as I should like—her
mother will pull her to pieces. But what’s
one to do—with nothing to do it on?
And she’s better than when she came—you
can tell her mother that. I’m sorry to have
to say it to you—but the poor child was
a sight.”
“Oh I’ll turn her out myself!” the
visitor cordially said.
“I shall like to see how!”—Mrs.
Beale appeared much amused. “You must bring
her to show me—we can manage that.
Good-bye, little fright!” And her last word
to Sir Claude was that she would keep him up to the
mark.
The idea of what she was to make up and the prodigious
total it came to were kept well before Maisie at her
mother’s. These things were the constant
occupation of Mrs. Wix, who arrived there by the back
stairs, but in tears of joy, the day after her own
arrival. The process of making up, as to which
the good lady had an immense deal to say, took, through
its successive phases, so long that it heralded a term
at least equal to the child’s last stretch with
her father. This, however, was a fuller and richer
time: it bounded along to the tune of Mrs. Wix’s
constant insistence on the energy they must both put
forth. There was a fine intensity in the way
the child agreed with her that under Mrs. Beale and
Susan Ash she had learned nothing whatever; the wildness
of the rescued castaway was one of the forces that
would henceforth make for a career of conquest.
The year therefore rounded itself as a receptacle
of retarded knowledge—a cup brimming over
with the sense that now at least she was learning.
Mrs. Wix fed this sense from the stores of her conversation
and with the immense bustle of her reminder that they
must cull the fleeting hour. They were surrounded
with subjects they must take at a rush and perpetually
getting into the attitude of triumphant attack.
They had certainly no idle hours, and the child went
to bed each night as tired as from a long day’s
play. This had begun from the moment of their
reunion, begun with all Mrs. Wix had to tell her young
friend of the reasons of her ladyship’s extraordinary
behaviour at the very first.
