IX


The idea of what she was to make up and the prodigious total it came
to were kept well before Maisie at her mother's. These things were the
constant occupation of Mrs. Wix, who arrived there by the back stairs,
but in tears of joy, the day after her own arrival. The process of
making up, as to which the good lady had an immense deal to say, took,
through its successive phases, so long that it heralded a term at least
equal to the child's last stretch with her father. This, however, was
a fuller and richer time: it bounded along to the tune of Mrs. Wix's
constant insistence on the energy they must both put forth. There was
a fine intensity in the way the child agreed with her that under Mrs.
Beale and Susan Ash she had learned nothing whatever; the wildness of
the rescued castaway was one of the forces that would henceforth make
for a career of conquest. The year therefore rounded itself as a
receptacle of retarded knowledge--a cup brimming over with the sense
that now at least she was learning. Mrs. Wix fed this sense from the
stores of her conversation and with the immense bustle of her reminder
that they must cull the fleeting hour. They were surrounded with
subjects they must take at a rush and perpetually getting into the
attitude of triumphant attack. They had certainly no idle hours, and the
child went to bed each night as tired as from a long day's play. This
had begun from the moment of their reunion, begun with all Mrs. Wix had
to tell her young friend of the reasons of her ladyship's extraordinary
behaviour at the very first.

It took the form of her ladyship's refusal for three days to see her