Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/257

BOOK SIXTH: MRS. BROOK to her bow and another loaf, for her desolate old age, on the shelf. When everything else is gone Mitchy will still be there. Then it will be at least her own fault—!" Mrs. Brook continued. "What can relieve me of the primary duty of taking precautions,"she wound up, "when I know as well as that I stand here and look at you—"

"Yes, what?" he asked as she just paused.

"Why, that so far as they count on you, they count, my dear Van, on a blank." Holding him a minute as with the soft, low voice of his fate, she sadly but firmly shook her head. "You won't do it."

"Oh!" he almost too loudly protested.

"You won't do it," she went on.

"I say!"—he made a joke of it.

"You won't do it," she repeated.

It was as if he could not at last but show himself really struck; yet what he exclaimed on was what might in truth most have impressed him. "You are magnificent, really!"

"Mr. Mitchett!" the butler, appearing at the door, almost familiarly dropped; on which Vanderbank turned straight to the person announced.

Mr. Mitchett was there, and, anticipating Mrs. Brook in receiving him, her companion passed it straight on. "She's magnificent!"

Mitchy was already all interest. "Rather! But what's her last?"

It had been, though so great, so subtle, as they said in Buckingham Crescent, that Vanderbank scarce knew how to put it. "Well, she's so thoroughly superior."

"Oh, to whom do you say it?" Mitchy cried as he greeted her. 247