“My good Fanny, don’t be an adorable idiot! I’m only trying to give the poor little duffer a good time. There’s nothing else to do. The other girls really are—now, you know they are, Fanny—between ourselves——”
“They’re all duty people, of course,” she said. “Well, only do be careful.”
He was careful. He subdued his impulses to tenderness and gentle raillery. He talked seriously to little Miss Mouse, and presently he found that she was seriously talking to him—telling him, for instance, how she wrote poetry, and how she longed to show it to some one and ask whether it really was so bad as she sometimes feared.
What could he do but beg her to show it to him? But there he pulled himself up short.
“There’s skating to-morrow. We’re going to drive over to Dansent. Would you like to come?”
Her grey eyes looked up quickly, and the long lashes drooped over them. She had read of that trick in a book, and for the life of him he could not help knowing it. Her answer to his question came from a book, too, though it also came from her heart.
“Ah,” she said, “you know!”
Then the Honourable James was honestly frightened. Next day he had a telegram, and departed abruptly. And as abruptly the old lady returned.
And now Maisie had a secret joy to feed on—a manna to sustain her in the wilderness of her tiresome life. She thought of him. He loved her; she was certain of it. Miss Mouse could imagine no reason but love for the kindness he had shown her. He had gone away without a word, but that was for some good reason. Probably he had gone to confess to his mother how he had given his whole heart to a penniless orphan—well, she was half an orphan, anyway. But the days slipped by and he did not come back. All that bright time at Christmas had faded like a picture from a magic-lantern when the slide is covered. Lady Yalding was quite nice and kind, but she left Maisie to the work Maisie was paid for.
Maisie’s mother perceived, through Maisie’s studied accounts of her happiness, more than a glimpse of the reality.