e hanged
if I know who we shall be good for!"

Mrs. Beale showed the child an intenser light. "I dare say you WILL save
us--from one thing and another."

"Oh I know what she'll save ME from!" Sir Claude roundly asserted.
"There'll be rows of course," he went on.

Mrs. Beale quickly took him up. "Yes, but they'll be nothing--for you
at least--to the rows your wife makes as it is. I can bear what _I_
suffer--I can't bear what you go through."

"We're doing a good deal for you, you know, young woman," Sir Claude
went on to Maisie with the same gravity.

She coloured with a sense of obligation and the eagerness of her desire
it should be remarked how little was lost on her. "Oh I know!"

"Then you must keep us all right!" This time he laughed.

"How you talk to her!" cried Mrs. Beale.

"No worse than you!" he gaily answered.

"Handsome is that handsome does!" she returned in the same spirit. "You
can take off your things," she went on, releasing Maisie.

The child, on her feet, was all emotion. "Then I'm just to stop--this
way?"

"It will do as well as any other. Sir Claude, to-morrow, will have your
things brought."

"I'll bring them myself. Upon my word I'll see them packed!" Sir Claude
promised. "Come here and unbutton."

He had beckoned his young companion to where he sat, and he helped
to disengage her from her coverings while Mrs. Beale, from a little
distance, smiled at the hand he displayed. "There's a stepfather for
you! I'm bound to say, you know, that he makes up for the want of other
people."

"He makes up for the want of a nurse!" Sir Claude laughed. "Don't you
remember I told you so the very first time?"

"Remember? It was exactly what made me think so well of you!"

"Nothing would induce me," the young man said to Maisie, "to tell you
what made me think so well of HER." Having divested the child he kissed
her gently and gave her a little pat to make her stand off. The pat was
accompanied with a vague sigh in which his gravity of a moment before
came back. "All the same, if you hadn't had the fatal gift of beauty--"

"Well, what?" Maisie asked, wondering why he paused. It was the first
time she had heard of her beauty.

"Why, we shouldn't all be thinking so well of each other!"

"He isn't speaking of personal loveliness--you've not THAT vulgar
beauty, my dear, at all," Mrs. Beale explained. "He's just talking of
plain dull charm of character."

"Her character's the most extraordinary