Maisie felt still more bewildered. "One what?"
They spoke as if you might have two, but Mrs. Wix looked as if it were not altogether a happy thought, and Maisie didn't see how even an affirmative from her own lips would clear up what had become most of a mystery. It was to this larger puzzle she sprang pretty straight. "IS she my mother now?"
It was a point as to which an horrific glimpse of the responsibility of an opinion appeared to affect Mrs. Wix like a blow in the stomach. She had evidently never thought of it; but she could think and rebound. "If she is, he's equally your father."
Maisie, however, thought further. "Then my father and my mother--!"
But she had already faltered and Mrs. Wix had already glared back: "Ought to live together? Don't begin it AGAIN!" She turned away with a groan, to reach the washing-stand, and Maisie could by this time recognise with a certain ease that that way verily madness did lie. Mrs. Wix gave a great untidy splash, but the next instant had faced round. "She has taken a new line."
"What SHE thinks so--'go and dress the young lady!' But it's something!" she panted. Then she thought out the rest. "If he won't have her, why she'll have YOU. She'll be the one."
"The one to give you a home." Mrs. Wix saw further; she mastered all the portents. "Oh she's cruelly clever! It's not a moral sense." She reached her climax: "It's a game!"
"Not to lose him. She has sacrificed him--to her duty."
Mrs. Wix made no answer; her vision absorbed her. "He has fought. But she has won."
"Then won't he come?" the child repeated.
Mrs. Wix made it out. "Yes, hang him!" She had never been so profane.
For all Maisie minded! "Soon--to-morrow?"
"But then we SHALL be together!" the child went on. It made Mrs. Wix look at her as if in exasperation; but nothing had time to come before she precipitated: "Together with YOU!" The air of criticism continued, but took voice only in her companion's bidding her wash herself and come down. The silence of quick ablutions fell upon them, presently broken, however, by one of Maisie's sudden reversions. "Mercy, isn't she handsome?"
Mrs. Wix had finished; she waited. "She'll attract attention." They were rapid, and it would have been noticed that the shock the beauty had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive spur to their preparations for rejoining her. She had none the less, when they returned to the sitting-room, already descended; the open door of her room showed it empty and the chambermaid explained. Here again they were delayed by another sharp thought of Mrs. Wix's. "But what will she live on meanwhile?"