"Shall _I_ guess it?" Maisie quavered.

Mrs. Beale was again amused. "Why you're just the person! It must be
quite the sort of thing you've heard at your awful mother's. Have you
never seen women there crying to her to 'spare' the men they love?"

Maisie, wondering, tried to remember; but Sir Claude was freshly
diverted. "Oh they don't trouble about Ida! Mrs. Wix cried to you to
spare ME?"

"She regularly went down on her knees to me."

"The darling old dear!" the young man exclaimed.

These words were a joy to Maisie--they made up for his previous
description of Mrs. Wix. "And WILL you spare him?" she asked of Mrs.
Beale.

Her stepmother, seizing her and kissing her again, seemed charmed with
the tone of her question. "Not an inch of him! I'll pick him to the
bone!"

"You mean that he'll really come often?" Maisie pressed.

Mrs. Beale turned lovely eyes to Sir Claude. "That's not for me to
say--its for him."

He said nothing at once, however; with his hands in his pockets
and vaguely humming a tune--even Maisie could see he was a little