Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/366

THE AWKWARD AGE "But if he does fear," said her mother, "that there may be something in it—?"

Mitchy jerked back to Mrs. Brook. "Well, you see, I don't want to give way to my fear. Suppose there should be something! Let me not know."

She met him tenderly. "I see. You couldn't—so soon—bear it."

"Ah but, savez-vous," the Duchess interposed with some majesty, "you're horrid!"

"Let them alone," Mitchy continued. "We don't want at all events a general romp."

"Oh, I thought just that," said Mrs. Brook, "was what the Duchess wished the door locked for! Perhaps moreover"—she returned to Tishy—"he has not yet found the book."

"He can't," Tishy said with simplicity.

"But why in the world—?"

"You see she's sitting on it"—Tishy felt, it was plain the responsibility of explanation. "So that unless he pulls her off—"

"He can't compass his desperate end? Ah, I hope he won't pull her off!" Mrs. Brook wonderfully murmured. It was said in a manner that stirred the circle, and unanimous laughter seemed already to have crowned her invocation, lately uttered, to the social spirit. "But what in the world," she pursued, "is the book selected for such a position? I hope it's not a very big one."

"Oh, aren't the books that are sat upon," Mr. Cashmore freely inquired, "as a matter of course the bad ones?"

"Not a bit as a matter of course," Harold as freely replied to him. "They sit, all round, nowadays—I mean in the papers and places—on some awfully good stuff. Why, I myself read books that I couldn't—upon my honor I wouldn't risk it!—read out to you here."

"What a pity," his father dropped with the special 356