Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/458

THE AWKWARD AGE He shook his head with decision. "I don't see anything for myself, and I beg you to understand that it's not what I've come here to-day to do. Anything I may yet see which I don't already see will be only, I warn you, so far as you shall make it very clear. There—you've work cut out. And is it with Mr. Mitchett, may I ask, that you've been, as you mention, cutting it?"

Nanda looked about her as if weighing many things; after which her eyes came back to him. "Do you mind if I don't sit down?"

"I don't mind if you stand on your head—at the pass we've come to."

"I shall not try your patience," the girl good-humoredly replied, "so far as that. I only want you not to be worried if I walk about a little."

Mr. Longdon, without a movement, kept his posture. "Oh, I can't oblige you there. I shall be worried. I've come on purpose to be worried, and the more I surrender myself to the rack the more, I seem to feel, we shall have threshed our business out. So you may dance, if you like, on the absolutely passive thing you've made of me."

"Well, what I have had from Mitchy," she cheerfully responded, "is practically a lesson in dancing; by which I perhaps mean rather a lesson in sitting, myself, as want you to do while I talk, as still as a mouse. They take," she declared, "while they talk, an amount of exercise!"

"They?" Mr. Longdon wondered. "Was his wife with him?"

"Dear no—he and Mr. Van."

"Was Mr. Van with him?"

"Oh no—before, alone. All over the place."

Mr. Longdon had a pause so rich in inquiry that when he at last spoke his question was itself like an answer. "Mr. Van has been to see you?"

"Yes. I wrote and asked him." 448