“Well, ask Paul, ask Anna, ask some one else to look for something for you; but you mustn’t come to me, darling, this is Miss Bibby’s holiday, you don’t want to spoil it for her, do you?” Miss Bibby looked at him beseechingly.
But Max’s lip drooped lower and lower. Outside in the garden pranced Muffie and Pauline, a long tasselled drawback from the dining-room curtains, sweeping magnificently after each of them.
[p123]
They had thought of them first, they insisted and, strongest reason of all, had got them first. Max had better be a sheep or a Manx cat, and not bother about a tail.
But Max, after a heart-breaking attempt to remove the drawing-room tie-back, which some over-provident person had stitched firmly in its place (as if anticipating unhallowed use being made of it), Max had gone bursting with his woes to the one who held his mother’s place.
“Please run away, darling,” said Miss Bibby again.
But Max sank down to the ground, and lifted up his voice in a bitter howl.
“Mamma—I want my mamma,” he yelled, as if he thought that by pitching the key high his voice might sound across the watery waste that separated her from him.
Miss Bibby was not proof against this; in fact it is just possible that Max had long since discovered that this mode of appeal was the most successful one he could essay.
She kissed and comforted him and, holding his hand, went out of the room in search of some article that would lend itself to the present necessity.
Max dragged her to the drawing-room.