“Courses?” Maisie had never heard of such
things.
“At institutions—on subjects.”
Maisie continued to stare. “Subjects?”
Mrs. Beale was really splendid. “All the
most important ones. French literature—and
sacred history. You’ll take part in classes—with
awfully smart children.”
“I’m going to look thoroughly into the
whole thing, you know.” And Sir Claude,
with characteristic kindness, gave her a nod of assurance
accompanied by a friendly wink.
But Mrs. Beale went much further. “My dear
child, you shall attend lectures.”
The horizon was suddenly vast and Maisie felt herself
the smaller for it. “All alone?”
“Oh no; I’ll attend them with you,”
said Sir Claude. “They’ll teach me
a lot I don’t know.”
“So they will me,” Mrs. Beale gravely
admitted. “We’ll go with her together—it
will be charming. It’s ages,” she
confessed to Maisie, “since I’ve had any
time for study. That’s another sweet way
in which you’ll be a motive to us. Oh won’t
the good she’ll do us be immense?” she
broke out uncontrollably to Sir Claude.
He weighed it; then he replied: “That’s
certainly our idea.”
Of this idea Maisie naturally had less of a grasp,
but it inspired her with almost equal enthusiasm.
If in so bright a prospect there would be nothing
to long for it followed that she wouldn’t long
for Mrs. Wix; but her consciousness of her assent
to the absence of that fond figure caused a pair of
words that had often sounded in her ears to ring in
them again. It showed her in short what her father
had always meant by calling her mother a “low
sneak” and her mother by calling her father
one. She wondered if she herself shouldn’t
be a low sneak in learning to be so happy without
Mrs. Wix. What would Mrs. Wix do?—where
would Mrs. Wix go? Before Maisie knew it, and
at the door, as Sir Claude was off, these anxieties,
on her lips, grew articulate and her stepfather had
stopped long enough to answer them. “Oh
I’ll square her!” he cried; and with this
he departed.
Face to face with Mrs. Beale, Maisie, giving a sigh
of relief, looked round at what seemed to her the
dawn of a higher order. “Then every
one will be squared!” she peacefully said.
On which her stepmother affectionately bent over her
again.
It was Susan Ash who came to her with the news:
“He’s downstairs, miss, and he do look
beautiful.”
In the schoolroom at her father’s, which had
pretty blue curtains, she had been making out at the
piano a lovely little thing, as Mrs. Beale called
it, a “Moonlight Berceuse” sent her through
the post by Sir Claude, who considered that her musical
education had been deplorably neglected and who, the
last months at her mother’s, had been on the
point of making arrangements for regular lessons.
She knew from him familiarly that the real thing,
as he said, was shockingly dear and that anything
else was a waste of money, and she therefore rejoiced
the more at the sacrifice represented by this composition,
of which the price, five shillings, was marked on
the cover and which was evidently the real thing.
She was already on her feet. “Mrs. Beale
has sent up for me?”
