Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/55

BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE The Duchess was frank and jovial. "I would, I promise you, if I could get at her! But isn't that woman always with her?"

Mrs. Brookenham smoothed the little embroidered tea-cloth. "Do you call Tishy Grendon a woman?"

Again the Duchess had one of her pauses, which were indeed so frequent in her talks with this intimate that an auditor could sometimes wonder what particular form of relief they represented. They might have been a habit proceeding from the fear of undue impatience. If the Duchess had been as impatient with Mrs. Brookenham as she would possibly have seemed without them, her frequent visits, in the face of irritation, would have had to be accounted for. "What do you call her?" she demanded.

"Why, Nanda's best friend—if not her only one. That's the place I should have liked for Aggie," Mrs. Brookenham ever so graciously smiled.

The Duchess, hereupon, going beyond her, gave way to free mirth. "My dear thing, you're delightful. Aggie or Tishy is a sweet thought. Since you're so good as to ask why Aggie has fallen off, you'll excuse my telling you that you've just named the reason. You've known ever since we came to England what I feel about the proper persons—and the most improper—for her to meet. The Tishy Grendons are far from the proper."

Mrs. Brookenham continued to assist a little in the preparations for tea. "Why not say at once, Jane"—and her tone, in its appeal, was almost infantine—"that you've come at last to placing even poor Nanda, for Aggie's wonderful purpose, in the same impossible class?"

The Duchess took her time, but at last she accepted her duty. "Well, if you will have it. You know my ideas. If it isn't my notion of the way to bring up a girl to give her up, in extreme youth, to an intimacy with a young married woman who is both unhappy and silly, 45