Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/411

BOOK NINTH: VANDERBANK "She has told you she feels I'd be there?" Mitchy after an instant asked.

"I'm not sure," his friend replied, "that I ought quite to mention anything she has 'told' me. I speak of what I've made out for myself."

"Then I thank you more than I can say for your penetration. Her mother, I should let you know," Mitchy continued, "is with her just now."

Mr. Longdon took off his glasses with a jerk. "Has anything happened to her?"

"To account for the fact I refer to?" Mitchy said in amusement at his start. "She's not ill, that I know of, thank goodness, and she has not broken her leg. But something, none the less, has happened to her—that, I think, I may say. To tell you all, in a word, it's the reason, such as it is, of my being here to meet you. Mrs. Brook asked me to wait. She'll see you herself some other time."

Mr. Longdon wondered. "And Nanda too?"

"Oh, that must be between yourselves. Only, while I keep you here—"

"She understands my delay?"

Mitchy thought. "Mrs. Brook must have explained." Then as his companion took this in silence, "But you don't like it?" he inquired.

"It only comes to me that Mrs. Brook's explanations—!"

"Are often odd? Oh yes. But Nanda, you know, allows for that oddity. And Mrs. Brook, by the same token," Mitchy developed, "knows herself—no one better—what may frequently be thought of it. That's precisely the reason of her desire that you should have, on this occasion, explanations from a source that she's so good as to pronounce, for the immediate purpose, superior. As for Nanda," he wound up, "to be aware that we're here together won't strike her as so bad a sign." 401