Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/434

THE AWKWARD AGE "The thing is, you see, that I haven't a conscience. I only want my fun."

They had on this a second look, also decidedly comfortable, though discounted, as the phrase is, by the other, which had really, in its way, exhausted the possibilities of looks. "Oh, I want my fun too," said Nanda, "and, little as it may strike you in some ways as looking like it, just this, I beg you to believe, is the real thing. What's at the bottom of it," she went on, "is a talk I had not long ago with mother."

"Oh yes," Van returned with brightly blushing interest. "The fun," he laughed, "that's to be got out of 'mother'!"

"Oh, I'm not thinking so much of that. I'm thinking of any that she herself may be still in a position to pick up. Mine, now, don't you see? is in making out how I can manage for this. Of course it's rather difficult," the girl pursued, "for me to tell you exactly what I mean."

"Oh, but it isn't a bit difficult for me to understand you!" Vanderbank spoke, in his geniality, as if this were in fact the veriest trifle. "You've got your mother on your mind. That's very much what I mean by your conscience."

Nanda had a fresh hesitation, but evidently unaccompanied, at present, by any pain. "Don't you still like mamma?" she at any rate quite successfully brought out. "I must tell you," she quickly subjoined, "that, though I've mentioned my talk with her as having finally led to my writing to you, it isn't in the least that she then suggested my putting you the question. I put it," she explained, "quite off my own bat."

The explanation, as an effect immediately produced, manifestly, for Vanderbank—and also on the spot—improved it. He sat back in his chair with a pleased—a distinctly exhilarated—sense of the combination. "You're an adorable family!"

"Well then, if mother's adorable, why give her up? 424