Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/449

BOOK TENTH: NANDA "And my wife—did you know it?" Mitchy went on, "is positively getting thick with your mother. Of course it isn't new to you that she's wonderful for wives. Now that our marriage is an accomplished fact she takes the greatest interest in it—or bids fair to, if her attention can only be thoroughly secured—and more particularly in what, I believe, is generally called our peculiar situation: for it appears, you know, that we're, in the most conspicuous manner possible, in a peculiar situation. Aggie is therefore already, and is likely to be still more, in what's universally recognized as your mother's regular line. Your mother will attract her, study her, finally 'understand' her. In fact, she'll help her, as she has helped so many before, and will help so many still to come. With Aggie thus as a satellite and a frequenter—in a degree in which she never yet has been," he continued, "what will the whole thing be but a practical multiplication of our points of contact? You may remind me of Mrs. Brook's contention that if she did in her time keep something of a saloon, the saloon is now, in consequence of events, but a collection of fortuitous atoms; but that, my dear Nanda, will become, none the less, to your clearer sense, but a pious echo of her momentary modesty or—call it at the worst—her momentary despair. The generations will come and go, and the personnel, as the newspapers say, of the saloon will shift and change, but the institution itself, as resting on a deep human need, has a long course yet to run and a good work yet to do. We sha'n't last, but your mother will, and as Aggie is happily very young she's therefore provided for, in the time to come, on a scale sufficiently considerable to leave us just now at peace. Meanwhile, as you're almost as good for husbands as Mrs. Brook is for wives, why aren't we, as a couple, we Mitchys, quite ideally arranged for, and why mayn't I speak to you of my future as sufficiently guaranteed? The only 439