Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/436

THE AWKWARD AGE This time at least her speech, while she went from point to point, completely hushed him, though, after full glimpse of the direction it was taking, he ceased to meet her eyes and only sat staring hard at the pattern of the rug. Even when at last he spoke it was without looking up. "You're indeed, as she herself used to say, the modern daughter! It takes that type to wish to make a career for her parents."

"Oh," said Nanda, very simply, "it isn't a 'career' exactly, is it—keeping hold of an old friend; but it may console a little, mayn't it, for the absence of one? At all events I didn't want not to have spoken before it's too late. Of course I don't know what's the matter between you, or if anything's really the matter at all. I don't care, at any rate, what is—it can't be anything very bad. Make it up, make it up—forget it. I don't pretend that's a career for you any more than for her; but there it is. I know how I sound—most patronizing and pushing; but nothing venture nothing have. You can't know how much you are to her. You're more to her, I verily believe, than any one ever was. I hate to have the appearance of plotting anything about her behind her back; so I'll just say it once for all. She said once, in speaking of it to a person who repeated it to me, that you had done more for her than any one, because it was you who had really brought her out. It was—you did, I saw it at the time myself. I was very small, but could see it. You'll say I must have been a most uncanny little wretch, and I dare say I was, and am keeping now the pleasant promise. That doesn't prevent one's feeling that when a person has brought a person out—"

"A person should take the consequences," Vanderbank broke in, "and see a person through?" He could meet her now perfectly, and proceeded admirably to do it. "There's an immense deal in that, I admit—I admit. 426