Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/246

THE AWKWARD AGE that at this season, while the day drags and drags, I'm glad to have any one with me who may keep them at a distance."

Vanderbank had not sat down; slowly, familiarly, he turned about. "And where's Nanda?"

"Oh, she doesn't help—she attracts rather the worst of the bogies. Edward and Nanda and Harold and I seated together are fairly a case for that—what do you call it?—investigating Society. Deprived of the sweet resource of the Hovel," Mrs. Brook continued, "we shall each, from about the tenth on, forage somehow or other for ourselves. Mitchy perhaps," she added, "will insist on taking us to Baireuth."

"That will be the form, you mean, of his own forage?"

Mrs. Brook just hesitated. "Unless you should prefer to take it as the form of yours."

Vanderbank appeared for a moment, obligingly enough, to turn this over, but with the effect of perceiving an objection. "Oh, I'm afraid I shall have to grind straight through the month, and that by the time I'm free every Ring, at Baireuth, will certainly have been rung. Is it your idea to take Nanda?" he asked.

She reached out for another cushion. "If it's impossible for you to manage what I suggest, why should that question interest you?"

"My dear woman"—and her visitor dropped into a chair—"do you suppose my interest depends on such poverties as what I can manage? You know well enough," he went on in another tone, "why I care for Nanda and inquire about her."

She was perfectly ready. "I know it, but only as a bad reason. Don't be too sure!"

For a moment they looked at each other. "Don't be so sure, you mean, that the elation of it may go to my head? Are you really warning me against vanity?"

"Your 'reallys,' my dear Van, are a little formidable, 236