Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/59

BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE Mrs. Brookenham hesitated. "I don't know what he calls it; but he said yesterday that he'd come to-day. I've had tea earlier for you," she went on with her most melancholy kindness—"and he's always late. But we mustn't, between us, lick the platter clean."

The Duchess entered very sufficiently into her companion's tone. "Oh, I don't feel at all obliged to consider him, for he has not, of late, particularly put himself out for me. He has not been to see me since I don't know when, and the last time he did come he brought Mr. Mitchett."

"Here it was the other way round. It was Mr. Mitchett, last year, who first brought Lord Petherton."

"And who," asked the Duchess, "had first brought Mr. Mitchett?"

Mrs. Brookenham meeting her friend's eyes, looked for an instant as if trying to remember. "I give it up. I muddle beginnings."

"That doesn't matter, if you only make them," the Duchess smiled.

"No, does it?" To which Mrs. Brookenham added: "Did he bring Mr. Mitchett for Aggie?"

"If he did they will have been disappointed. Neither of them has seen, in my house, the tip of her nose." The Duchess announced this circumstance with a pomp of pride.

"Ah, but with your ideas that doesn't prevent."

"Prevent what?"

"Why, what you call, I suppose, the pourparlers."

"For Aggie's hand? My dear," said the Duchess, "I'm glad you do me the justice of feeling that I'm a person to take time by the forelock. It was not, as you seem to remember, with the sight of Mr. Mitchett that the question of Aggie's hand began to occupy me. I should be ashamed of myself if it were not constantly before me and if I had not my feelers out in more 49