Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/110

THE AWKWARD AGE His fellow-guest, who was shy and apparently nervous, sidled about a little, swinging an eye-glass, yet glancing in a manner a trifle birdlike from object to object. "Mrs. Edward Brookenham, I think."

"Oh!" Mitchy himself felt, as soon as this comment had quitted his lips, that it might sound even to a stranger like a sign, such as the votaries of Mrs. Edward Brookenham had fallen into the way of constantly throwing off, that he recognized her hand in the matter. There was, however, something in his entertainer's face that somehow encouraged frankness; it had the sociability of surprise—it hadn't the chill. Mitchy saw, at the same time, that this friend of old Van's would never really understand him; though that was a thing he at times liked people as much for as he liked them little for it at others. It was in fact when he most liked that he was on the whole most tempted to mystify. "Only Mrs. Brook?—no others?"

"'Mrs. Brook'?" his friend echoed; staring an instant, as if literally missing the connection; but quickly after, to show he was not stupid—and indeed it seemed to show he was delightful—smiling with extravagant intelligence. "Is that the right thing to say?"

Mitchy gave the kindest of laughs. "Well, I dare say I oughtn't to."

"Oh, I didn't mean to correct you," his interlocutor hastened to profess; "I meant, on the contrary, will it be right for me too?"

Mitchy's great goggle attentively fixed him. "Try it."

"To her?"

"To every one."

"To her husband?"

"Oh, to Edward," Mitchy laughed again, "perfectly!"

"And must I call him 'Edward'?"

"Whatever you do will be right," Mitchy returned—"even though it happen to be sometimes what I do." 100