Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/291

BOOK SEVENTH: MITCHY "Ah no—you're too much your mother's daughter for that!" Vanderbank leaned back and smoked, and though all his air seemed to say that when one was so at ease for gossip almost any subject would do, he kept jogging his foot with the same small nervous motion as during the half-hour at Mertle that this record has commemorated. "You're too much one of us all," he continued. "We've tremendous perceptions," he laughed. "Of course I should have come for him. But after all," he added as if all sorts of nonsense would equally serve, "he mightn't, except for you, you know, have asked me."

Nanda so far accepted this view as to reply: "That's awfully weak. He's so modest that he might have been afraid of your boring yourself."

"That's just what I mean."

"Well, if you do," Nanda returned, "the explanation's a little conceited."

"Oh, I only made it," Vanderbank said, "in reference to his modesty." Beyond the lawn the house was before him, old, square, red-roofed, well assured of its right to the place it took up in the world. This was a considerable space—in the little world, at least, of Beccles—and the look of possession had everywhere mixed with it, in the form of old windows and doors, the tone of old red surfaces, the style of old white facings, the age of old high creepers, the long confirmation of time. Suggestive of panelled rooms, of precious mahogany, of portraits of women dead, of colored china glimmering through glass doors, and delicate silver reflected on bared tables, the thing was one of those impressions of a particular period that it takes two centuries to produce. "Fancy," the young man incoherently exclaimed, "his caring to leave anything so lovable as all this to come up and live with us!"

he girl, for a little, also lost herself. "Oh, you don't know what it is—the charm comes out so as one stays. 281