Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/117

BOOK THIRD: MR. LONGDON their colloquy. "See here, Mr. Longdon. Are you seriously taking him up?"

Once more, at the tone of this appeal, the old man perceptibly colored. It was as if his friend had brought to the surface an inward excitement, and he laughed for embarrassment. "You see things with a freedom—!"

"Yes, and it's so I express them. I see them, I know, with a raccourci; but time, after all, rather presses, and at any rate we understand each other. What I want now is just to say"—and Mitchy spoke with a simplicity and a gravity he had not yet used—"that if your interest in him should at any time reach the point of your wishing to do something or other (no matter what, don't you see?) for him—"

Mr. Longdon, as he faltered, appeared to wonder, but emitted a sound of gentleness. "Yes?"

"Why," said the stimulated Mitchy, "do, for God's sake, just let me have a finger in it."

Mr. Longdon's momentary mystification was perhaps partly but the natural effect of constitutional prudence. "A finger?"

"I mean—let me help."

"Oh!" breathed the old man thoughtfully and without meeting his eyes.

Mitchy, as if with more to say, watched him an instant; then, before speaking, caught himself up. "Look out—here he comes."

Hearing the stir of the door by which he had entered, he looked round; but it opened at first only to admit Vanderbank's servant. "Miss Brookenham!" the man announced; on which the two gentlemen in the room were—audibly, almost violently—precipitated into a union of surprise. 107