Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/163

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE "She had on her return from your rooms a most unusual fit of frankness, for she generally tells me nothing."

"Well," said Vanderbank, "how did she put it?"

Mrs. Brook reflected—recovered it. "'I like him awfully, but I'm not in the least his idea.'"

"His idea of what?"

"That's just what I asked her. Of the proper grandchild for mamma."

Vanderbank hesitated. "Well, she isn't." Then after another pause: "But she'll do."

His companion gave him a deep look. "You'll make her?"

He got up, and on seeing him move Mr. Longdon also rose, so that, facing each other across the room, they exchanged a friendly signal or two. "I'll make her."

 XV

Their hostess's account of Mr. Cashmere's motive for not staying on was so far justified as that Vanderbank, while Mr. Longdon came over to Mrs. Brook, appeared without difficulty to engage him further. The lady in question, meanwhile, had drawn her old friend down, and her present method of approach would have interested an observer aware of the unhappy conviction that she had just privately expressed. Some trace indeed of the glimpse of it enjoyed by Mr. Cashmere's present interlocutor might have been detected in the restlessness that Vanderbank's desire to keep the other pair uninterrupted was still not able to banish from his attitude. Not, however, that Mrs. Brook took the smallest account of it as she quickly broke out: "How can we thank you enough, my dear man, for your extraordinary kindness?" The reference was vivid, yet Mr. Longdon looked so blank about it that she had immediately to explain. "I mean 153