Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/370

THE AWKWARD AGE Mitchy, who, for a while past, had sat gazing at the floor, now raised his good natural goggles and stretched his closed mouth to its widest. "Oh, I think we're pretty good still!" he then replied.

Mrs. Brook indeed appeared, after a pause and addressing herself again to Tishy, to give a reluctant illustration of it, coming back as from an excursion of the shortest to the question momentarily dropped. "I'm bound to say, all the more, you know, that I don't quite see what Aggie mayn't now read." Suddenly, however, her look at their informant took on an anxiety. "Is the book you speak of something very awful?"

Mrs. Grendon, with so much, these past minutes, to have made her so, was at last visibly more present. "That's what Lord Petherton says of it. From what he knows of the author."

"So that he wants to keep her—?"

"Well, from trying it first. I think he wants to see if it's good for her."

"That's one of the most charming cares, I think," the Duchess said, "that a gentleman may render to a young woman to whom he desires to be useful. I won't say that Petherton always knows how good a book may be, but I'd trust him any day to say how bad."

Mr. Longdon, who had sat, throughout, silent and still, quitted his seat at this and evidently, in so doing, gave Mrs. Brook as much occasion as she required. She also got up, and her movement brought to her view, at the door of the further room something that drew from her a quick exclamation. "He can tell us now, then—for here they come!" Lord Petherton, arriving with animation and followed so swiftly by his young companion that she presented herself as pursuing him, shook triumphantly over his head a small volume in blue paper. There was a general movement at the sight of them, and by the time they had rejoined their friends the company, 360