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give up any rights in her that I may consider
I've acquired by my own sacrifices. I shall hold very fast to my
interest in her. What seems to have happened is that she has brought you
and me together."
    "She has brought you and me together," said Sir Claude.
    His cheerful echo prolonged the happy truth, and Maisie broke out almost
with enthusiasm: "I've brought you and her together!"
    Her companions of course laughed anew and Mrs. Beale gave her an
affectionate shake. "You little monster—take care what you do! But
that's what she does do," she continued to Sir Claude. "She did it to me
and Beale."
    "Well then," he said to Maisie, "you must try the trick at OUR place."
He held out his hand to her again. "Will you come now?"
    "Now—just as I am?" She turned with an immense appeal to her
stepmother, taking a leap over the mountain of "mending," the abyss of
packing that had loomed and yawned before her. "Oh MAY I?"
    Mrs. Beale addressed her assent to Sir Claude. "As well so as any other
way. I'll send on her things to-morrow." Then she gave a tug to the
child's coat, glancing at her up and down with some ruefulness.
    "She's not turned out as I should like—her mother will pull her to
pieces. But what's one to do—with nothing to do it on? And she's better
than when she came—you can tell her mother that. I'm sorry to have to
say it to you—but the poor child was a sight."
    "Oh I'll turn her out myself!" the visitor cordially said.
    "I shall like to see how!"—Mrs. Beale appeared much amused. "You must
bring her to show me—we can manage that. Good-bye, little fright!" And
her last word to Sir Claude was that she would keep him up to the mark.

IX
*
    The idea of what she was to make up and the prodigious total it came
to were kept well before Maisie at her mother's. These things were the
constant occupation of Mrs. Wix, who arrived there by the back stairs,
but in tears of joy, the day after her own arrival. The process of
making up, as to which the good lady had an immense deal to say, took,
through its successive phases, so long that it heralded a term at least
equal to the child's last stretch with her father. This, however, was
a fuller and richer time: it bounded along to the tune of Mrs. Wix's
constant insistence on the energy they must both put forth. There was
a fine intensity in the way the child agreed with her that under Mrs.
Beale and Susan Ash she had learned nothing whatever; the wildness of
the rescued castaway was one of the forces that would henceforth make
for a career of conquest. The year therefore rounded itself as a
receptacle of retarded knowledge—a cup brimming over with the sense
that now at least she was learning. Mrs. Wix fed this sense from the
stores of her conversation and with the immense bustle of her reminder
that they must cull the fleeting hour. They were surrounded with
subjects they must take at a rush and perpetually getting into the
attitude of triumphant attack. They had certainly no idle hours, and the
child went to bed each night as tired as from a long day's play. This
had begun from the moment of their reunion, begun with all Mrs. Wix had
to tell her young friend of the reasons of her ladyship's extraordinary
behaviour at the very first.
    It took the form of her ladyship's refusal for three days to see her
little girl—three days during which Sir Claude made hasty merry dashes
into the schoolroom to smooth down the odd situation, to say "She'll
come round, you know; I assure you she'll come round," and a little
even to compensate Maisie for the indignity he had caused her to suffer.
There had never in the child's life been, in all ways, such a delightful
amount of reparation. It came out by his sociable admission that her
ladyship had not known of his visit to her late husband's house and
of his having made that person's daughter a pretext for striking up
an acquaintance with the dreadful creature installed there. Heaven
knew she wanted her child back and had made every plan