THE AWKWARD AGE
put on the screw." He spoke with the ring of impatience. "I want her got out."
"'Out'?"
"Out of her mother's house."
Vanderbank laughed, though, more immediately, he had colored. "Why, her mother's house is just where I see her!"
"Precisely; and if it only were not, we might get on faster."
Vanderbank, for all his kindness, looked still more amused. "But if it only were not, as you say, I seem to see that you wouldn't have your particular vision of urgency."
Mr. Longdon, through adjusted glasses, took him in with a look that was sad as well as sharp, then jerked the glasses off. "Oh, you understand me."
"Ah," said Vanderbank, "I'm a mass of corruption!"
"You may perfectly be, but you shall not," Mr. Longdon returned with decision, "get off on any such plea. If you're good enough for me, you're good enough, as you thoroughly know, on whatever head, for any one."
"Thank you." But Vanderbank, for all his happy appreciation, thought again. "We ought, at any rate to remember, oughtn't we? that we should have Mrs. Brook against us."
His companion faltered but an instant. "Ah, that's another thing I know. But it's also exactly why. Why I want Nanda away."
"I see, I see."
The response had been prompt, yet Mr. Longdon seemed suddenly to show that he suspected the superficial. "Unless it's with Mrs. Brook you're in love." Then on his friend's taking the idea with a mere headshake of negation, a repudiation that might even have astonished by its own lack of surprise, "Or unless Mrs. Brook's in love with you," he amended.
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