Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/28

THE AWKWARD AGE to say enough. There isn't anything any one can say that I won't agree to."

"That shows you really don't care," the old man returned with acuteness.

"Oh, we're past saving, if that's what you mean!" Vanderbank laughed.

"You don't care, you don't care!" his visitor repeated, "and—if I may be frank with you—I shouldn't wonder if it were rather a pity."

"A pity I don't care?"

"You ought to, you ought to." Mr. Longdon paused. "May I say all I think?"

"I assure you I shall! You're awfully interesting."

"So are you, if you come to that. It's just what I've had in my head. There's something I seem to make out in you—!" He abruptly dropped this, however, going on in another way. "I remember the rest of you, but why did I never see you?"

"I must have been at school—at college. Perhaps you did know my brothers, elder and younger."

"There was a boy with your mother at Malvern. I was near her there for three months in—what was the year?"

"Yes, I know," Vanderbank replied while his guest tried to fix the date. "It was my brother Miles. He was awfully clever, but he had no health, poor chap, and we lost him at seventeen. She used to take houses at such places with him—it was supposed to be for his benefit."

Mr. Longdon listened with a visible recovery. "He used to talk to me—I remember he asked me questions I couldn't answer and made me dreadfully ashamed. But I lent him books—partly, upon my honor, to make him think that, as I had them, I did know something. He read everything and had a lot to say about it. I used to tell your mother he had a great future." 18