"Well--not by any act of ours."

"And I shall be able to go on with mamma?" Maisie asked.

"Oh I don't say that!"

She considered. "But I thought you said you had squared her?"

Sir Claude poked his stick at the splashboard of the cab. "Not, my dear
child, to the point she now requires."

"Then if she turns me out and I don't come here--"

Sir Claude promptly took her up. "What do I offer you, you naturally
enquire? My poor chick, that's just what I ask myself. I don't see it,
I confess, quite as straight as Mrs. Wix."

His companion gazed a moment at what Mrs. Wix saw. "You mean WE can't
make a little family?"

"It's very base of me, no doubt, but I can't wholly chuck your mother."

Maisie, at this, emitted a low but lengthened sigh, a slight sound of
reluctant assent which would certainly have been amusing to an auditor.
"Then there isn't anything else?"

"I vow I don't quite see what there is."

Maisie waited; her silence seemed to signify that she too had no