Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/68

THE AWKWARD AGE "Of course then there'll be others—lots. The more the better for Harold."

This young man's father was silent a little. "Perhaps—if they don't play high."

"Ah," said his mother, "however Harold plays, he has a way of winning."

"He has a way, too, of being a hopeless ass. What I meant was how he comes there at all," Brookenham explained.

"Why, as any one comes—by being invited. She wrote to him—weeks ago."

Brookenham was discoverably affected by this fact, but it would not have been possible to say if his satisfaction exceeded his surprise. "To Harold? Very good-natured." He had another short reflection, after which he continued: "If they don't send, he'll be in for five miles in a fly—and the man will see that he gets his money."

"They will send—after her note."

"Did it say so?"

Mrs. Brookenham's melancholy eyes seemed, from afar, to run over the page. "I don't remember—but it was so cordial."

Again Brookenham meditated. "That often doesn't prevent one's being let in for ten shillings."

There was more gloom in this forecast than his wife had desired to produce. "Well, my dear Edward, what do you want me to do? Whatever a young man does, it seems to me, he's let in for ten shillings."

"Ah, but he needn't be—that's my point, I wasn't at his age."

Harold's mother took up her book again. "Perhaps you weren't the same success! I mean at such places."

"Well, I didn't borrow money to make me one—as I have a sharp idea our young scamp does."

Mrs. Brookenham hesitated. "From whom do you mean—the Jews?" 58