Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/416

THE AWKWARD AGE The elder man, for a while, said nothing more, but he at last came back. "She'd like me actually to give him something?"

"I dare say!"

"Money?"

Mitchy smiled. "A handsome present." They were face to face again, with more mute interchange. "She doesn't want him to have lost—!" Mr. Longdon, however, on this, once more broke off while Mitchy's eyes followed him. "Doesn't it give a sort of measure of what she may feel—?"

He had paused, working it out again, with the effect of his friend's returning afresh to be fed with his light. "Doesn't what give it?"

"Why, the fact that we still like him."

Mr. Longdon stared. "Do you still like him?"

"If I didn't how should I mind—?" But on the utterance of it Mitchy fairly pulled up.

His companion, after another look, laid a mild hand on his shoulder. "What is it you mind?"

"From him? Oh, nothing!" He could trust himself again. "There are people like that—great cases of privilege."

"He is one!" Mr. Longdon mused.

"There it is. They go through life, somehow, guaranteed. They can't help pleasing."

"Ah," Mr. Longdon murmured, "if it hadn't been for that—!"

"They hold, they keep every one," Mitchy went on. "It's the sacred terror."

The companions, for a little, seemed to stand together in this element; after which the elder turned once more away and appeared to continue to walk in it. "Poor Nanda!" then, in a far-off sigh, came across from him to Mitchy. Mitchy, on this, turned vaguely around to the fire, into which he remained gazing till he heard again 406