Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/367

BOOK EIGHTH: TISHY GRENDON shade of dryness that was all Edward's own, "that you haven't got one of your favorites to try on us!"

Harold looked about as if it might have been after all a happy thought. "Well, Nanda's the only girl."

"And one's sister doesn't count," said the Duchess.

"It's just because the thing's bad," Tishy resumed for Mrs. Brook's more particular benefit, "that Lord Petherton is trying to wrest it."

Mrs. Brook's pale interest deepened. "Then it's a real hand-to-hand struggle?"

"He says she sha'n't read it; she says she will."

"Ah, that's because—isn't it, Jane?" Mrs. Brook appealed—"he so long overlooked and advised her in those matters. Doesn't he feel by this time—so awfully clever as he is—the extraordinary way she has come out?"

"'By this time'?" Harold echoed. "Dearest mummy, you're too sweet. It's only about ten weeks—isn't it, Mitch? You don't mind my saying that, I hope," he solicitously added.

Mitchy had his back to him and, bending it a little, sat with head dropped and knees pressing his hands together. "I don't mind any one's saying anything."

"Lord, are you already past that?" Harold sociably laughed.

"He used to vibrate to everything. My dear man, what is the matter?" Mrs. Brook demanded. "Does it all move too fast for you?"

"Mercy on us, what are you talking about? That's what I want to know!" Mr. Cashmore vivaciously declared.

"Well, she has gone at a pace—if Mitchy doesn't mind," Harold interposed in the tone of tact and taste. "But then don't they always—I mean when they're like Aggie and they once get loose—go at a pace? That's what I want to know. I don't suppose mother did, nor Tishy, nor the Duchess," he communicated to the rest, "but mother and Tishy and the Duchess, it strikes me, 357