Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/209

BOOK FIFTH: THE DUCHESS "After so many?" Mr. Longdon laughed. "Don't you think that's rather a back seat, as they say, for one's best?"

"A back seat?"—she wondered with a purity!

"If you don't understand," said her companion, "it serves me right, as your aunt didn't leave me with you to teach you the slang of the day."

"The 'slang'?"—she again spotlessly speculated.

"You've never even heard the expression? I should think that a great compliment to our time if it weren't that I fear it may have been only the name that has been kept from you."

The light of ignorance in the child's smile was positively golden. "The name?" she again echoed.

She understood too little—he gave it up. "And who are all the other best friends whom poor Nanda comes after?"

"Well, there's my aunt, and Miss Merriman, and Gelsomina, and Dr. Beltram."

"And who, please, is Miss Merriman?"

"She's my governess, don't you know?—but such a deliciously easy governess."

"That, I suppose, is because she has such a deliciously easy pupil. And who is Gelsomina?" Mr. Longdon inquired.

"She's my old nurse—my old maid."

"I see. Well, one must always be kind to old maids. But who is Dr. Beltram?"

"Oh, the most intimate friend of all. We tell him everything."

There was, for Mr. Longdon, in this, with a slight uncertainty, an effect of drollery. "Your little troubles?"

"Ah, they're not always so little! And he takes them all away."

"Always?—on the spot?"

"Sooner or later," said little Aggie with serenity. "But why not?" 199