has brought me here to-day is that I've a message for Maisie from dear
Mrs. Farange."

The child's heart gave a great thump. "Oh mamma's come back?"

"Not yet, sweet love, but she's coming," said Mrs. Wix, "and she
has--most thoughtfully, you know--sent me on to prepare you."

"To prepare her for what, pray?" asked Miss Overmore, whose first
smoothness began, with this news, to be ruffled.

Mrs. Wix quietly applied her straighteners to Miss Overmore's flushed
beauty. "Well, miss, for a very important communication."

"Can't dear Mrs. Farange, as you so oddly call her, make her
communications directly? Can't she take the trouble to write to her only
daughter?" the younger lady demanded. "Maisie herself will tell you that
it's months and months since she has had so much as a word from her."

"Oh but I've written to mamma!" cried the child as if this would do
quite as well.

"That makes her treatment of you all the greater scandal," the governess
in possession promptly declared.

"Mrs. Farange is too well aware," said Mrs. Wix with sustained spirit,
"of what becomes of her letters in this house."

Maisie's sense of fairness hereupon interposed for her visitor. "You
know, Miss Overmore, that papa doesn't like everything of mamma's."