Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/151

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE "I don't say the calculations are petty," Mr. Cashmore objected.

"Well, she's a great creature. If she does fall—"His hostess lost herself in the view, which was at last all before her. "Be sure we shall all know it."

"That's exactly what I'm afraid of!"

"Then don't be afraid till we do. She would fall, as it were, on us, don't you see? and," said Mrs. Brook with decision this time in her head-shake, "that couldn't be. We must keep her up—that's your guarantee. It's rather too much," she added with the same increase of briskness, "to have to keep you up too. Be very sure that if Carrie really wavers—"

"Carrie?"

His interruption was clearly too vague to be sincere, and it was as such that, going straight on, she treated it. "I shall never again give her three minutes' attention. To answer to you for Fanny without being able—"

"To answer to Fanny for me, do you mean?" He had flushed quickly as if he awaited her there. "It wouldn't suit you, you contend? Well then, I hope it will ease you off," he went on with spirit, "to know that I wholly loathe Mrs. Donner."

Mrs. Brook, staring, met the announcement with an absolute change of color. "And since when, pray?" It was as if a fabric had crumbled. "She was here but the other day, and as full of you, poor thing, as an egg of meat."

Mr. Cashmore could only blush for her. "I don't say she wasn't. My life's a burden from her."

Nothing, for a spectator, could have been so odd as Mrs. Brook's disappointment unless it had been her determination. "Have you done with her already?"

"One has never done with a buzzing insect—"

"Until one has literally killed it?" Mrs. Brookenham wailed. "I can't take that from you, my dear man: it 141