Mrs. Wix continued to hedge. "I want to know if you do!"
Everything in the child's person, at this, announced that it was easy to know. "Not for a moment."
"Not the two now?" Mrs. Wix had caught on; she flushed with it. "Only him alone?"
"Him alone or nobody."
"Not even me?" cried Mrs. Wix.
Maisie looked at her a moment, then began to undress. "Oh you're nobody!"
XXIX
Her sleep was drawn out, she instantly recognised lateness in the way her eyes opened to Mrs. Wix, erect, completely dressed, more dressed than ever, and gazing at her from the centre of the room. The next thing she was sitting straight up, wide awake with the fear of the hours of "abroad" that she might have lost. Mrs. Wix looked as if the day had already made itself felt, and the process of catching up with it began for Maisie in hearing her distinctly say: "My poor dear, he has come!"
"Sir Claude?" Maisie, clearing the little bed-rug with the width of her spring, felt the polished floor under her bare feet.