Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/143

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE I'm a small objectionable child, but that I'm scarcely even human. He doesn't conceive me as with any wants."

"Oh," Mr. Cashmore laughed, "you've all—you youngsters—as many wants, I know, as an advertisement page of the Times."

Harold showed an admiration. "That's awfully good. If you think you ought to speak of it," he continued, "do it rather to mamma." He noted the hour. "I'll go, if you'll excuse me, to give you the chance."

The visitor referred to his own watch. "It's your mother herself who gives the chances—the chances you take."

Harold looked kind and simple. "She has come in, I know. She'll be with you in a moment."

He was half-way to the door, but Mr. Cashmore, though so easy, had not done with him. "I suppose you mean that if it's only your mother who's told, you may depend on her to shield you."

Harold turned this over as if it were a questionable sovereign, but on second thoughts he wonderfully smiled. "Do you think that after you've let me have it you can tell? You could, of course, if you hadn't." He appeared to work it out for Mr. Cashmore's benefit. "But I don't mind," he added, "your telling mamma."

"Don't mind, you mean, really, its annoying her so awfully?"

The invitation to repent thrown off in this could only strike the young man as absurd—it was so previous to any enjoyment. Harold liked things in their proper order; but, at the same time, his evolutions were quick. "I dare say I am selfish, but what I was thinking was that the terrific wigging, don't you know?—well, I'd take it from her. She knows about one's life—about our having to go on, by no fault of our own, as our parents start us. She knows all about wants—no one has more than mamma." 133