doing so that made her bolt."

Maisie could grasp the force of this reasoning, but it offered no check
to Mrs. Wix. "Why need you mind that--if you've done it for so high a
motive? Think of the beauty of it," the good lady pressed.

"Of bolting with YOU?" Sir Claude ejaculated.

She faintly smiled--she even faintly coloured. "So far from doing you
harm it will do you the highest good. Sir Claude, if you'll listen to
me, it will save you."

"Save me from what?"

Maisie, at this question, waited with renewed suspense for an answer
that would bring the thing to some finer point than their companion
had brought it to before. But there was on the contrary only more
mystification in Mrs. Wix's reply. "Ah from you know what!"

"Do you mean from some other woman!"

"Yes--from a real bad one."

Sir Claude at least, the child could see, was not mystified; so little
indeed that a smile of intelligence broke afresh in his eyes. He turned
them in vague discomfort to Maisie, and then something in the way she
met them caused him to chuck her playfully under the chin. It was not
till after this that he good-naturedly met Mrs. Wix. "You think me much
worse than I am."