Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/445

BOOK TENTH: NANDA can be no question of anything of that kind. I see. He has done me no wrong."

Nanda, with her eyes now on the window, turned it over. "I don't much think he would know even if I had."

"I see, I see. And we wouldn't tell him."

She turned with some abruptness from the outer view. "We wouldn't tell him. But he was beautiful all round," she went on. "No one could have been nicer about having for so long, for instance, come so little to the house. As if he hadn't only too many other things to do! He didn't even make them out nearly the hinderances he might. But fancy, with his important duties—all the great affairs on his hands—our making vulgar little rows about being 'neglected'! He actually made so little of what he might easily plead—speaking so, I mean, as if he were all in the wrong—that one had almost, positively, to show him his excuses. As if"—she really kept it up—"he hasn't plenty!"

"It's only people like me," Mitchy threw out, "who have none?"

"Yes—people like you. People of no use, of no occupation and no importance. Like you, you know," she pursued, "there are so many." Then it was with no transition of tone that she added: "If you're bad, Mitchy, I won't tell you anything."

"And if I'm good what will you tell me? What I want really most to know is why he should be, as you said just now, 'apologetic' to Mr. Longdon. What's the wrong he allows he has done him?"

"Oh, he has 'neglected' him—if that's any comfort to us—quite as much."

"Hasn't looked him up, and that sort of thing?"

"Yes—and he mentioned some other matter."

Mitchy wondered. "Mentioned it?"

"In which," said Nanda, "he hasn't pleased him." 435