Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/21

BOOK FIRST: LADY JULIA His friend hesitated. Then with a smile a trifle strange: "Excuse me; I didn't mention—"

"No, you didn't; and your scruple was magnificent. In point of fact," Vanderbank pursued, "I don't call Mrs. Brookenham by her Christian name."

Mr. Longdon's clear eyes were searching. "Unless in speaking of her to others?" He seemed really to wish to know.

Vanderbank was but too ready to satisfy him. "I dare say we seem to you a vulgar lot of people. That's not the way, I can see, you speak of ladies at Beccles."

"Oh, if you laugh at me—!" And the old man turned off.

"Don't threaten me," said Vanderbank, "or I will send away the cab. Of course I know what you mean. It will be tremendously interesting to hear how the sort of thing we've fallen into—oh, we have fallen in!—strikes your fresh ear. Do have another cigarette. Sunk as I must appear to you, it sometimes strikes mine. But I'm not sure, as regards Mrs. Brookenham, whom I've known a long time—"

Mr. Longdon again took him up. "What do you people call a long time?"

Vanderbank considered. "Ah, there you are—! And now we're 'we people'! That's right; give it to us. I'm sure that in one way or another it's all earned. Well, I've known her ten years. But awfully well."

"What do you call awfully well?"

"We people?" Vanderbank's inquirer, with his continued restless observation, moving nearer, the young man had laid on his shoulder the most considerate of hands. "Don't you perhaps ask too much? But no," he added, quickly and gayly, "of course you don't: if I don't look out I shall have, on you, exactly the effect I don't want. I dare say I don't know how well I know Mrs. Brookenham. Mustn't that sort of thing be put, in a manner, to 11