Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/17

BOOK FIRST: LADY JULIA Vanderbank was, however, not serious. "Wouldn't it carry off anything?"

Again his visitor, through the pince-nez, appeared to crown him with a Whitehall cornice. "I think I ought to let you know I'm studying you. It's really fair to tell you," he continued, with an earnestness not discomposed by the indulgence in Vanderbank's face. "It's all right—all right!" he reassuringly added, having meanwhile stopped before a photograph suspended on the wall. "That's your mother!" he exclaimed with something of the elation of a child making a discovery or guessing a riddle. "I don't make you out in her yet—in my recollection of her, which, as I told you, is perfect; but I dare say I soon shall."

Vanderbank was more and more aware that the kind of hilarity he excited would never in the least be a bar to affection. "Please take all your time."

Mr. Longdon looked at his watch again. "Do you think I had better keep it?"

"The cab?" Vanderbank liked him so, found in him such a promise of pleasant things, that he was almost tempted to say: "Dear and delightful sir, don't weigh that question; I'll pay, myself, for the man's whole night!" His approval at all events was complete. "Most certainly. That's the only way not to think of it."

"Oh, you young men, you young men!" his guest again murmured. He had passed on to the photograph—Vanderbank had many, too many photographs—of some other relation, and stood wiping the gold-mounted glasses through which he had been darting admirations and catching side-lights of shocks. "Don't talk nonsense," he continued as his friend attempted once more to throw in a protest; "I belong to a different period of history. There have been things this evening that have made me feel as if I had been disinterred— 7