Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/340

THE AWKWARD AGE you know, that I don't think she's making quite the bargain she might. If he were to want me I don't say he mightn't have me, but I should have it on my conscience to make it in one way or another a good thing for my parents. You are nice, old woman"—he turned to his sister—"and one can still feel, for the flower of your youth, something of the wonderful 'reverence' that we were all brought up on. For God's sake therefore—all the more—don't really close with him till you've had another word or two with me. I'll be hanged"—he appealed to the company again—"if he shall have her for nothing!"

"See rather," Vanderbank said to Mrs. Grendon, 'how little it's like your really losing her that she should be able, this evening, fairly to bring the dear man to you. At this rate we don't lose her—we simply get him as well."

"Ah, but is it quite the dear man's company we want?"—and Harold looked anxious and acute. "If that's the best arrangement Nanda can make—!"

"If he hears us talking in this way, which strikes me as very horrible," Nanda interposed very simply and gravely, "I don't think we're likely to get anything."

"Oh, Harold's talk," Vanderbank protested, "offers, I think, an extraordinary interest; only, I'm bound to say, it crushes me to the earth. I've to make, at least, as I listen to him, a big effort to bear up. It doesn't seem long ago," he pursued to his young friend, "that I used to feel I was in it; but the way you bring it home to me, dreadful youth, that I'm already not—!"

Harold looked earnest to understand. "The hungry generations tread you down—is that it?"

Vanderbank gave a fine sad head-shake. "We speak a different language."

"Ah, but I think I perfectly understand yours!"

"That's just my anguish—and your advantage. It's awfully curious," Vanderbank went on to Nanda, "but 330