alternative to suggest. But she made another appeal. "If I come here
you'll come to see me?"

"I won't lose sight of you."

"But how often will you come?" As he hung fire she pressed him. "Often
and often?"

Still he faltered. "My dear old woman--" he began. Then he paused again,
going on the next moment with a change of tone. "You're too funny! Yes
then," he said; "often and often."

"All right!" Maisie jumped out. Mrs. Beale was at home, but not in the
drawing-room, and when the butler had gone for her the child suddenly
broke out: "But when I'm here what will Mrs. Wix do?"

"Ah you should have thought of that sooner!" said her companion with the
first faint note of asperity she had ever heard him sound.




XIV


Mrs Beale fairly swooped upon her and the effect of the whole hour was
to show the child how much, how quite formidably indeed, after all, she
was loved. This was the more the case as her stepmother, so changed--in
the very manner of her mother--that she really struck her as a new
acquaintance, somehow recalled more familiarity than Maisie could feel.