Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/403

BOOK NINTH: VANDERBANK But it had already brought her quite round, and to a firmer earth that she clearly preferred to tread. "Are things really bad with you, Mitch?"

"Well, I'll tell you how they are. But not now."

"Some other time?—on your honor?"

"You shall have them all. Don't be afraid."

She dimly smiled. "It will be like old times."

He rather demurred. "For you perhaps. But not for me?"

In spite of what he said it did hold her, and her hand again almost caressed him. "But—till you do tell me—is it very, very dreadful?"

"That's just, perhaps, what I may have to get you to decide."

"Then shall I help you?" she eagerly asked.

"I think it will be quite in your line."

At the thought of her line—it sounded somehow so general—she released him a little with a sigh, yet still looking round, as it were, for possibilities. "Jane, you know, is in a state."

"Yes, Jane's in a state. That's a comfort!"

She continued in a manner to cling to him. "But is it your only one?"

He was very kind and patient. "Not perhaps quite."

"I'm a little of one?"

"My dear child, as you see."

Yes, she saw, but was still launched. "And shall you have recourse—?"

"To what?" he asked as she appeared to falter.

"I don't mean to anything violent. But shall you tell Nanda?"

Mitchy wondered. "Tell her—?"

"Well, everything. I think, you know," Mrs. Brook musingly observed, "that it would really serve her right."

Mitchy's silence, which lasted a minute, seemed to 393