Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/283

BOOK SIXTH: MRS. BROOK the moment, proved, as she a little let herself go, sufficient to make it flow over; but she drew, the next thing, from her daughter's stillness, a reflection of the vanity of her flurry, and speedily recovered herself as if in order, with more dignity, to point the moral. "I can carry my burden and shall do so to the end; but we must each remember that we shall fall to pieces if we don't manage to keep hold of some little idea of responsibility. I positively can't arrange without knowing when it is you go to him."

"To Mr. Longdon? Oh, whenever I like," Nanda replied, very gently and simply.

"And when shall you be so good as to like?"

"Well, he goes himself on Saturday, and if I want I can go a few days later."

"And what day can you go if I want?" Mrs. Brook spoke as with a small sharpness—just softened indeed in time—produced by the sight of a freedom on her daughter's part that suddenly loomed larger than any freedom of her own. It was still a part of the unsteadiness of the vessel of her anxieties; but she never, after all, remained publicly long subject to the influence that she often comprehensively designated to others, as well as to herself, as "nastiness." "What I mean is that you might go the same day, mightn't you?"

"With him—in the train? I should think so, if you wish it."

"But would he wish it? I mean would he hate it?"

"I don't think so at all, but I can easily ask him."

Mrs. Brook's head inclined to the chimney and her eyes to the window. "Easily?"

Nanda looked for a moment mystified by her mother's insistence. "I can at any rate perfectly try it."

"Remembering even that mamma would never have pushed so?"

Nanda's face seemed to concede even that condition. 273