Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/210

THE AWKWARD AGE "Why not indeed?" he laughed. "It must be very plain sailing." Decidedly, she was, as Nanda had said, an angel, and there was a wonder in her possession, on this footing, of one of the most expressive little faces that even her expressive race had ever shown him. Formed to express everything, it scarce expressed, as yet, even a consciousness. All the elements of play were in it, but they had nothing to play with. It was a rest moreover, after so much that he had lately been through, to be with a person for whom questions were so simple. "But he sounds, all the same, like the kind of doctor whom, as soon as one hears of him, one wants to send for."

The young girl had, at this, a small light of confusion. "Oh, I don't mean he's a doctor for medicine. He's a clergyman—and my aunt says he's a saint. I don't think you've many in England," little Aggie continued to explain.

"Many saints? I'm afraid not. Your aunt's very happy to know one. We should call Dr. Beltram, in England, a priest."

"Oh, but he's English. And he knows everything we do—and everything we think."

"'We'—your aunt, your governess and your nurse? What a varied wealth of knowledge!"

"Ah, Miss Merriman and Gelsomina tell him only what they like."

"And do you and the Duchess tell him what you don't like?"

"Oh, often—but we always like him—no matter what we tell him. And we know that, just the same, he always likes us."

"I see then, of course," said Mr. Longdon, very gravely now, "what a friend he must be. So it's after all this," he continued in a moment, "that Nanda comes in?" 200