E. Nesbit

“ But towards Christmas a change came. Maisie had hoped—more intensely than she had ever in her life hoped for anything—for a few days’ grace, for a sight of her mother, and the mahogany, and the damask curtains, and—yes—of Edward. But the old lady, who really was exceptionally horrid, wondered how she could ask for a holiday when she had only been in her situation six weeks.
Then the old lady went off at half an hour’s notice to spend Christmas with her other daughter—Maisie would have suspected a “row” if Lady Yalding had been a shade less charming—and the girl was left. ”

“ There was money for the necessities of life, the mother said, but no money to waste. This was what she always tried to say when Maisie came in with rainbow representations of the glories of local “sales” piteous pictures of beautiful things going almost for nothing—things not absolutely needed, but which would “come in useful.” Maisie’s dress was never allowed those touches of cheap finery which would have made it characteristic of her. ”

“ I’ll send her home to her people.”
“On Christmas Eve? Fog and frost, and the trains all anyhow? Fanny, Fanny!”
“Oh, very well. We’ll have her down, and go the whole hog. Only don’t make a fool of the child, Jim; she’s a good little thing.”
And that was how the dream-dressed Lady Yalding came to sweep into the old lady’s sitting-room—it was as full of mahogany, by the way, as Maisie’s home in Lewisham—and spoke so kindly of Maisie’s loneliness, that the girl could have fallen down and worshipped at her Paris shoes. ”

“ She would have liked Japanese blue transfers instead of the gold-and-white china—old Bristol, by the way, but Maisie knew nothing of Bristol. The regular, sober orderliness of the house chafed and fretted her; the recurrent duties, all dull; the few guests who came to tea. Decent poverty cannot give dinner parties or dances. ”

“ The same scene, with intenser variations, was played about twice a week till the girl got her way, as she always did in the end, except in the matter of cheap finery. Taste in dress was as vital to the mother as her religion. Then, through the influence of an old governess of her mother’s, Maisie got her wish. She was to go as companion to an old lady, the mother of Lady Yalding, and she was to live at Yalding Towers. ”

“ It was a great pleasure to me to hear from you, but I must not allow myself that pleasure again, even if you were willing to give it to me. It would not be fair to you to let you write any more to a man who is not related to you. ”