THE AWKWARD AGE
said to her. It's for my seeing Mr. Longdon without—she thinks—her spoiling it."
"Oh, my dear child, 'spoiling it'!" Vanderbank protested as he took a cup of tea from her to carry to their friend. "When did your mother ever spoil anything? I told her Mr. Longdon wanted to see you, but I didn't say anything of his not yearning also for the rest of the family."
A sound of protest rather formless escaped from the gentleman named, but Nanda continued to carry out her duty. "She told me to ask why he hadn't been again to see her. Mr. Mitchy, sugar?—isn't that the way to say it? Three lumps? You're like me, only that I more often take five." Mitchy had dashed forward for his tea; she gave it to him; then she added, with her eyes on Mr. Longdon's, which she had had no difficulty in catching: "She told me to ask you all sorts of things."
The old man had got up to take his cup from Vanderbank, whose hand, however, dealt with him on the question of sitting down again. Mr. Longdon, resisting, kept erect with a low gasp that his host only was near enough to catch. This suddenly appeared to confirm an impression gathered by Vanderbank in their contact, a strange sense that his visitor was so agitated as to be trembling in every limb. It brought to his lips a kind of ejaculation—"I say!" But even as he spoke, Mr. Longdon's face, still white, but with a smile that was not all pain, seemed to supplicate him not to notice; and he was not a man to require more than this to achieve a divination as deep as it was rapid. "Why, we've all been scattered for Easter, haven't we?" he asked of Nanda. "Mr. Longdon has been at home, your mother and father have been paying visits, I myself have been out of London, Mitchy has been to Paris, and you—oh yes, I know where you've been."
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