Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/427

BOOK TENTH: NANDA though I dare say you think that by the noise I make I'm as good myself as a dozen. Isn't there some girl in some story—it isn't Scott; what is it?—who had domestic difficulties and a cage in her window and whom one associates with chickweed and virtue? It isn't Esmeralda—Esmeralda had a poodle, hadn't she?—or have I got my heroines mixed? You're up here yourself like a heroine; you're perched in your tower or what do you call it?—your bower. You quite hang over the place, you know—the great wicked city, the wonderful London sky and the monuments looming through: or am I again only muddling up my Zola? You must have the sunsets—haven't you? No—what am I talking about? Of course you look north. Well, they strike me as about the only thing you haven't. At the same time, it's not only because I envy you that I feel humiliated. I ought to have sent you some flowers." He smote himself with horror, throwing back his head with a sudden thought. "Why in goodness, when I got your note, didn't I for once in my life do something really graceful? I simply liked it and answered it. Here I am. But I've brought nothing. I haven't even brought a box of sweets. I'm not a man of the world."

"Most of the flowers here," Nanda at last said, "come from Mr. Longdon. Don't you remember his garden?"

Vanderbank, in quick response, called it up. "Dear yes—wasn't it charming? And that morning you and I spent there"—he was so careful to be easy about it—"talking under the trees."

"You had gone out to be quiet and read—"

"And you came out to look after me. Well, I remember," Van went on, "that we had some good talk."

The talk, Nanda's face implied, had become dim to her; but there were other things. "You know he's a great gardener—I mean really one of the greatest. His 417