Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/300

THE AWKWARD AGE Mitchy says; he says also he's one of those people will never really want."

"Ah, for that, Mitchy himself will never let him."

"Well then, with every one helping us, all round, aren't we a lovely family? I don't speak of it to tell tales, but when you mention hearing from Harold all sorts of things immediately come over me. We seem to be all living more or less on other people, all immensely 'beholden.' You can easily say of course that I'm the worst of all. The children and their people, at Bognor, are in borrowed quarters—mother got them lent her—as to which, no doubt, I'm perfectly aware that I ought to be there sharing them, taking care of my little brother and sister, instead of sitting here, at Mr. Longdon's expense, to expose everything and criticise. Father and mother, in Scotland, are on a programme of places—! Well"—she pulled herself up—"I'm not in that, at any rate. Say you've lent Harold only five shillings," she went on.

Vanderbank stood smiling. "Well, say I have. I never lend any one whatever more."

"It only adds to my conviction," Nanda explained, "that he writes to Mr. Longdon."

"But if Mr. Longdon doesn't say so—?" Vanderbank objected.

"Oh, that proves nothing." She got up as she spoke. "Harold also works Granny." He only laughed out, at first, for this, while she went on: "You'll think I make myself out fearfully deep—I mean in the way of knowing everything without having to be told. That is, as you say, mamma's great accomplishment, so it must be hereditary. Besides, there seem to me only too many things one is told. Only Mr. Longdon has in fact said nothing."

She had looked about responsibly, as if not to leave in disorder the garden nook they had occupied, picking up a newspaper and changing the place of a cushion. "I do 290