Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/335

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON "Ah, what has he done for you?" Nanda asked.

Again her friend hnng fire. "Do you remember something you said to me, down there, in August?"

She looked vague, but quite unembarrassed. "I remember but too well that I chattered."

"You declared to me that you knew everything."

"Oh yes—and I said so to Mitchy too."

"Well, my dear child, you don't."

"Because I don't know—?"

"Yes, what makes me the victim of his insatiable benevolence."

"Ah, well, if you've no doubt of it yourself, that's all that's required. I'm quite glad to hear of something I don't know," Nanda pursued. "And we're to have Harold too," she repeated.

"As a beneficiary? Then we shall fill up! Harold will give us a stamp."

"Won't he? I hear of nothing but his success. Mother wrote me that people are frantic for him; and," said the girl after an instant, "do you know what Cousin Jane wrote me?"

"What would she now? I'm trying to think."

Nanda relieved him of this effort. "Why, that mother has transferred to him all the scruples that she felt—'even to excess'—in my time, about what we might pick up among you all that wouldn't be good for us."

"That's a neat one for me!" Vanderbank declared. "And I like your talk about your antediluvian 'time.

"Oh, it's all over."

"What exactly is it," Vanderbank presently demanded, "that you describe in that manner."

"Well, my little hour. And the danger of picking up."

"There's none of it here?"

Nanda appeared frankly to judge. "No—because, really, Tishy, don't you see? is natural. We just talk." 325