Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/49

BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE some answer really helpful. "Do we live beyond our means?"

She now moved her gaze to the floor. "Will you please get away?"

"Anything to assist you. Only, if I should find I'm not wanted—?"

She met, after an instant, his look, and the wan loveliness and silliness of her own had never been greater. "Be wanted, and you won't find it. You're odious, but you're not a fool."

He put his arms about her now, for farewell, and she submitted as if it were absolutely indifferent to her to whose bosom she was pressed. "You do, dearest," he laughed, "say such sweet things!" And with that he reached the door, on opening which he pulled up at a sound from below. "The Duchess! She's coming up."

Mrs. Brookenham looked quickly round the room, but she spoke with utter detachment. "Well, let her come."

"As I'd let her go. I take it as a happy sign she won't be at Brander." He stood with his hand on the knob; he had another quick appeal. "But after Tuesday?"

Mrs. Brookenham had passed half round the room with the glide that looked languid but that was really a remarkable form of activity, and had given a transforming touch, on sofa and chairs, to three or four crushed cushions. It was all with the sad, inclined head of a broken lily. "You're to stay till the twenty-fourth."

"But if I am kicked out?"

It was as a broken lily that she considered it. "Then go to the Mangers."

"Happy thought! And shall I write?"

His mother raised a little more a window-blind. "No—I will."

"Delicious mummy!" And Harold blew her a kiss.

"Yes, rather"—she corrected herself. "Do write— 39