Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/294

THE AWKWARD AGE will say for you that, though, a girl, thank Heaven, and awfully much a girl, you're really not, on the whole, more of a flirt than a respectable social ideal permits."

"Thank you most tremendously," his companion quietly replied.

Something in the tone of it made him laugh out, and the particular sound went well with all the rest of it, with the August day and the charming spot and the young man's lounging figure and Nanda's own little hovering hospitality. "Of course I strike you as patronizing you with unconscious sublimity. Well, that's all right, for what's the most natural thing to do in these conditions but the most luxurious? Won't Mitchy be wonderful for feeling and enjoying them? I assure you I'm delighted he's coming." Then, in a different tone, a moment later, "Do you expect to be here long?" he asked.

It took Nanda some time to say, "As long as Mr. Longdon will keep me, I suppose—if that doesn't sound very horrible."

"Oh, he'll keep you! Only, won't he himself," Vanderbank went on, "be coming up to town in the course of the autumn?"

"Well, in that case I would perfectly stay here without him."

"And leave him in London without you? Ah, that's not what we want: he wouldn't be at all the same thing without you. Least of all for himself!" Vanderbank declared.

Nanda again thought. "Yes, that's what makes him funny, I suppose—his curious infatuation. I set him off—what do you call it?—show him off: by his going round and round me as the acrobat on the horse, in the circus, goes round the clown. He has said a great deal to me of your mother," she irrelevantly added.

"Oh, everything that's kind, of course—or you wouldn't mention it." 284