Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/408

THE AWKWARD AGE "That you receive him? Oh yes. He'll be the last to quarrel with that. But there's one more thing."

It was something over which, of a sudden, she had one of her returns of anxiety. "I've been trying for months and months to remember to find out from you—"

"Well, what?" he inquired, as she looked odd.

"Why, if Harold ever gave back to you, as he swore to me on his honor he would, that five-pound note—"

"But which, dear lady?" The sense of other incongruities than those they had been dealing with seemed to arrive now for Mitchy's aid.

"The one that, ages ago, one day when you and Van were here, we had the joke about. You produced it, in sport, as a 'fine' for something, and put it on that table; after which, before I knew what you were about, before I could run after you, you had gone off and ridiculously left it. Of course, the next minute—and again before I could turn round—Harold had pounced on it, and I tried in vain to recover it from him. But all I could get him to do—"

"Was to promise to restore it straight to its owner?"

Mitchy had listened so much less in surprise than in amusement that he had apparently, after a moment, reestablished the scene. "Oh, I recollect—he did settle with me. That's all right."

She fixed him from the door of the next room. "You got every penny?"

"Every penny. But fancy your bringing it up?"

"Ah, I always do, you know, some day."

"Yes, you're of a rigor—! But be at peace. Harold's quite square," he went on, "and I quite meant to have asked you about him."

Mrs. Brook, promptly, was all for this. "Oh, it's all right."

Mitchy came nearer. "Lady Fanny—?"

"Yes—has staid for him." 398