Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/128

THE AWKWARD AGE deep. Let them look, and tell me meanwhile if Mrs. Donner gave you my message."

"Oh yes, she told me some humbug."

"The humbug then was in the tone my perfectly sincere speech took from herself. She gives things, I recognize, rather that sound. It's her weakness," he continued, "and perhaps even, one may say, her danger. All the more reason you should help her, as I believe you're supposed to be doing, aren't you? I hope you feel that you are," he earnestly added.

He had spoken this time gravely enough, and with magnificent gravity Nanda replied. "I have helped her. Tishy is sure I have. That's what Tishy wants me for. She says that to be with some nice girl is really the best thing for her."

Poor Mitchy's face, hereupon, would have been interesting, would have been distinctly touching, to other eyes; but Nanda's were not heedful of it. "Oh," he returned after an instant and without profane mirth, "that seems to me the best thing for any one."

Vanderbank, however, might have caught his expression, for Vanderbank now reappeared, smiling on the pair as if struck by their intimacy. "How you are keeping it up!" Then to Nanda, persuasively: "Do you mind going to him in there? I want him so really to see you. It's quite, you know, what he came for."

Nanda seemed to wonder. "What will he do to me? Anything dreadful?"

"He'll tell you what I meant just now."

"Oh," said Nanda, "if he's a person who can tell me sometimes what you mean—!" With which she went quickly off.

"And can't I hear?" Mitchy asked of his host while they looked after her.

"Yes, but only from me." Vanderbank had pushed 118