Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/173

BOOK FOURTH: MR. CASHMORE somewhat to defy her to convict him, even from the point of view of Beccles, of a mistake.

Mrs. Brookcnham took it with a wonderful bright emotion. "My dear friend, vous me rendez la vie! If you can stand Mitchy you can stand any of us!"

"Upon my honor, I should think so!" Mr. Cashmore was eager to remark. "What on earth do you mean," he demanded of Mrs. Brook, "by saying that I'm more 'minute' than he?"

She turned her beauty an instant on this visitor. "I don't say you're more minute—I say he's more brilliant. Besides, as I've told you before, you're not one of us." With which, as a check to further discussion, she went straight on to Mr. Longdon: "The point about Aggie's conservative education is the wonderful sincerity with which the Duchess feels that one's girl may so perfectly and consistently be hedged in without one's really ever (for it comes to that,) depriving one's own self—"

"Well, of what?" Mr. Longdon boldly demanded while his hostess appeared thoughtfully to falter.

She addressed herself mutely to Vanderbank, in whom the movement produced a laugh. "I defy you," he exclaimed, "to say!"

"Well, you don't defy me!" Mr. Cashmore cried as Mrs. Brook failed to take up the challenge. "If you know Mitchy," he went on to Mr. Longdon, "you must know Petherton."

The old man remained vague and not imperceptibly cold. "Petherton?"

"My brother-in-law—whom, God knows why, Mitchy runs."

"Runs?" Mr. Longdon again echoed.

Mrs. Brook appealed afresh to Vanderbank. "I think we ought to spare him. I may not remind you of mamma," she continued to their companion, "but I hope you don't mind my saying how much you remind me. 163