that this favour might, like her presence and as if depending on it, be
only intermittent and for the season. Papa, on whose knee she sat, burst
into one of those loud laughs of his that, however prepared she was,
seemed always, like some trick in a frightening game, to leap forth and
make her jump. Before Miss Overmore could speak he replied: "Why, you
little donkey, when you're away what have I left to do but just to love
her?" Miss Overmore hereupon immediately took her from him, and they had
a merry little scrimmage over her of which Maisie caught the surprised
perception in the white stare of an old lady who passed in a victoria.
Then her beautiful friend remarked to her very gravely: "I shall make
him understand that if he ever again says anything as horrid as that
to you I shall carry you straight off and we'll go and live somewhere
together and be good quiet little girls." The child couldn't quite make
out why her father's speech had been horrid, since it only expressed
that appreciation which their companion herself had of old described as
"immense." To enter more into the truth of the matter she appealed to
him again directly, asked if in all those months Miss Overmore hadn't
been with him just as she had been before and just as she would be now.
"Of course she has, old girl--where else could the poor dear be?" cried
Beale Farange, to the still greater scandal of their companion, who
protested that unless he straightway "took back" his nasty wicked fib
it would be, this time, not only him she would leave, but his child too
and his house and his tiresome trouble--all the impossible things he
had succeeded in putting on her. Beale, under this frolic menace, took
nothing back at all; he was indeed apparently on the point of repeating
his extravagance, but Miss Overmore instructed her little charge that
she was not to listen to his bad jokes: she was to understand that a
lady couldn't stay with a gentleman that way without some awfully proper
reason.