Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/25

BOOK FIRST: LADY JULIA scrutiny of the faded image. "Do they give their portraits now?"

"Little girls—innocent lambs? Surely, to old friends. Didn't they in your time?"

Mr. Longdon studied the portrait again; after which, with an exhalation of something between superiority and regret, "They never did to me," he replied.

"Well, you can have all you want now!" Vanderbank laughed.

His friend gave a slow, droll head-shake. "I don't want them 'now'!"

"You could do with them, my dear sir, still," Vanderbank continued in the same manner, "every bit I do!"

"I'm sure you do nothing you oughtn't." Mr. Longdon kept the photograph and continued to look at it. "Her mother told me about her—promised me I should see her next time."

"You must—she's a great friend of mine."

Mr. Longdon remained absorbed. "Is she clever?"

Vanderbank turned it over. "Well, you'll tell me if you think so."

"Ah, with a child of seventeen—!" Mr. Longdon murmured it as if in dread of having to pronounce. "This one, too, is seventeen?"

Vanderbank again considered. "Eighteen." He just hung fire once more, then brought out: "Well, call it nearly nineteen. I've kept her birthdays," he laughed.

His companion caught at the idea. "Upon my honor, I should like to! When is the next?"

"You've plenty of time—the fifteenth of June."

"I'm only too sorry to wait." Laying down the object he had been examining, Mr. Longdon took another turn about the room, and his manner was such an appeal to his host to accept his restlessness that, from the corner of a lounge, the latter watched him with encouragement. "I said to you just now that I knew the mothers, 15