Page:The Awkward Age (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1899).djvu/70

THE AWKWARD AGE "Well, it's a relief to dine at home"—and Brookenham faced about. "Would you mind finding out?" he asked with some abruptness.

"Do you mean who's to dine?"

"No, that doesn't matter. But whether Mitchy has come down."

"I can only find out by asking him."

"Oh, I could ask him." He seemed disappointed at his wife's want of resource.

"And you don't want to?"

He looked coldly, from before the fire, over the prettiness of her brown, bent head. "It will be such a beastly bore if he admits it."

"And you think poor I can make him not admit it?" She put the question as if it were really her own thought too, but they were a couple who could, even face to face and unlike the augurs behind the altar, think these things without laughing. "If he should admit it," Mrs. Brookenham threw in, "will you give me the money—?"

"The money?"

"To pay Mitchy back."

She had now raised her eyes to her husband, but, turning away, he failed to meet them. "He'll deny it."

"Well, if they all deny it," she presently remarked, "it's a simple enough matter. I'm sure I don't want them to come down on us! But that's the advantage," she almost prattled on, "of having so many such charming friends—they don't come down."

This again was a remark of a sweep that there appeared to be nothing in Brookenham's mind to match; so that, scarcely pausing in the walk into which he had again fallen, he only said: "Who do you mean by 'all'?"

"Why, if he has had anything from Mitchy, I dare say he has had something from Van."

"Oh!" Brookenham returned, as if with a still greater drop of interest. 60