What Maisie Knew

Chapter 24

It continued to rain so hard that our young lady's private dream of

explaining the Continent to their visitor had to contain a provision for

some adequate treatment of the weather. At the _table d'h**_ that evening

she threw out a variety of lights: this was the second ceremony of the

sort she had sat through, and she would have neglected her privilege

and dishonoured her vocabulary--which indeed consisted mainly of the

names of dishes--if she had not been proportionately ready to dazzle

with interpretations. Preoccupied and overawed, Mrs. Wix was apparently

dim: she accepted her pupil's version of the mysteries of the menu in a

manner that might have struck the child as the depression of a credulity

conscious not so much of its needs as of its dimensions. Maisie was soon

enough