Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/136

THE AWKWARD AGE have, probably, quantities—and beantiful ones: so perhaps I oughtn't to tell you. But you'll find out for yourself."

"Yes—I'm rather slow; but I generally end by finding out. And I've got, thank Heaven," said Mr. Longdon, "quite prejudices enough."

"Then I hope you'll tell me some of them," Nanda replied in a tone evidently marking how much he pleased her.

"Ah, you must do as I do—you must find out for yourself. Your resemblance to your grandmother is quite prodigious," he immediately added.

"That's what I wish you'd tell me about—your recollection of her and your wonderful feeling about her. Mother has told me things, but that I should have something straight from you is exactly what she also wants. My grandmother must have been awfully nice," the girl rambled on, "and I somehow don't see myself at all as the same sort of person."

"Oh, I don't say you're in the least the same sort: all I allude to," Mr. Longdon returned, "is the miracle of the physical heredity. Nothing could be less like her than your manner and your talk."

Nanda looked at him with all her honesty. "They're not so good, you must think."

He hung fire an instant, but was as honest as she. "You're separated from her by a gulf—and not only of time. Personally, you see, you breathe a different air."

She thought—she quite took it in. "Of course. And you breathe the same—the same old one, I mean, as my grandmother."

"The same old one," Mr. Longdon smiled, "as much as possible. Some day I'll tell you more of what you desire. I can't go into it now."

"Because I've upset you so?" Nanda frankly asked.

"That's one of the reasons." 126