"What kind of idea?"
"Oh goodness knows!" She spoke with an approach to asperity. "He's so awfully delicate."
"Delicate?"—that was ambiguous.
"About what he does, don't you know?" said Mrs. Beale. She fumbled. "Well, about what we do."
Maisie wondered. "You and me?"
"Me and him, silly!" cried Mrs. Beale with, this time, a real giggle.
"But you don't do any harm—you don't," said Maisie, wondering afresh and intending her emphasis as a decorous allusion to her parents.
"Of course we don't, you angel—that's just the ground I take!" her companion exultantly responded. "He says he doesn't want you mixed up."
"Mixed up with what?"
"That's exactly what I want to know: mixed up with what, and how you are any more mixed—?" Mrs. Beale paused without ending her question. She ended after an instant in a different way. "All you can say is that it's his fancy."