Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/339

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON the country is as much worse—with the promiscuities and opportunities and all that—as you know for yourselves. I know some places," Harold declared, "where, if I had any girls, I'd see 'em shot before I'd take 'em."

"Oh, you know too much, my dear boy!" Vanderbank remarked with commiseration.

"Ah, my brave old Van," the youth returned, "don't speak as if you had illusions. I know," he pursued to the ladies, "just where some of Van's must have perished, and some of the places I've in mind are just where he has left his tracks. A man must be wedded to sweet superstitions, not, nowadays, to have to open his eyes. Nanda, love," he benevolently concluded, "stay where you are. So, at least, I sha'n't blush for you. That you've the good fortune to have reached your time of life with so little injury to your innocence makes you a case by yourself, of which we must recognize the claims. If Tishy can't stump you, that's nothing against you—Tishy comes of one of the few innocent English families that are left. Yes, you may all cry 'Oho!'— but I defy you to name me, say, five, or at most seven, in which some awful thing or other hasn't happened. Of course ours is one, and Tishy's is one, and Van's is one, and Mr. Longdon's is one, and that makes you, bang off, four. So there you are!" Harold gaily wound up.

"I see now why he's the rage!" Vanderbank observed to Nanda.

But Mrs. Grendon expressed to their young friend a lingering wonder. "Do you mean you go in for the adoption—?"

"Oh, Tishy!" Nanda mildly murmured.

Harold, however, had his own tact. "The dear man's taking her quite over? Not altogether unreservedly. I'm with the governor: I think we ought to get something. 'Oh yes, dear man, but what do you give us for her?'—that's what I should say to him. I mean, don't 329