Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/337

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON signs—was a retarded facial glimmer that, in respect to any subject, closed up the rear of the procession. It had been said of her indeed that when processions were at all rapid she was usually to be found, on a false impression of her whereabouts, mixed up with the next; so that now, for instance, by the time she had reached the point of saying to Vanderbank "Are you really hungry?" Nanda had begun to appeal to him for some praise of their hostess's appearance. This was of course with soft looks, up and down, at her clothes. "Isn't she too nice? Did you ever see anything so lovely?"

"I'm so faint with inanition," Van replied to Mrs. Grendon, "that—like the traveller in the desert, isn't it?—I only make out, as an oasis or a mirage, a sweet green rustling blur. I don't trust you."

"I don't trust you," Nanda said on her friend's behalf. "She isn't 'green'—men are amazing: they don't know the dearest old blue that ever was seen."

"Is it your 'old blue'?" Vanderbank, monocular, very earnestly asked. "I can imagine it was 'dear,' but I should have thought—"

"It was yellow"—Nanda helped him out—"if I hadn't kindly told you." Tishy's figure showed the confidence of objects consecrated by publicity; bodily speaking a beautiful human plant, it might have taken the last November gale to account for the completeness with which, in some quarters, she had shed her leaves. Her companions could only emphasize by the direction of their eyes the nature of the responsibility with which a spectator would have seen them saddled—a choice, as to consciousness, between the effect of her being and the effect of her not being dressed. "Oh, I'm hideous—of course I know it," said Tishy. "I'm only just clean. Here's Nanda now, who's beautiful," she vaguely continued, "and Nanda—"

"Oh but, darling, Nanda's clean too!" the young lady 327