THE AWKWARD AGE
to want her?" Mrs. Brook inquired with a detachment now complete. "Of course, dear old friend," she continued to Mr. Longdon, "she quite puts me with my back to the wall when she helps you to see—what you otherwise mightn't guess—that Edward and I work out between us to show off as tender parents and yet to get from you everything you'll give. I do the sentimental and he the practical; so that we, in one way and another, deck ourselves in the glory of our sacrifice without forfeiting the 'keep' of our daughter. This must appeal to you as another useful illustration of what London manners have come to; unless indeed," Mrs. Brook prattled on, "it only strikes you still more—and to a degree that blinds you to its other possible bearings—as the last proof that I'm too tortuous for you to know what I'd be at!"
Mr. Longdon faced her, across his interval, with his original terror represented now only by such a lingering flush as might have formed a natural tribute to a brilliant scene. "I haven't the glimmering of an idea of what you'd be at. But please understand," he added, "that I don't at all refuse you the private half-hour you referred to a while since."
"Are you really willing to put the child up for the rest of the year?" Edward placidly demanded, speaking as if quite unaware that anything else had been said.
His wife fixed her eyes on him. "The ingenuity of your companions, love, plays in the air like the lightning, but flashes round your head only, by good fortune, to leave it unscathed. Still, you have, after all, your own strange wit, and I'm not sure that any of ours ever compares with it. Only, confronted also with ours, how can poor Mr. Longdon really choose which of the two he'll meet?"
Poor Mr. Longdon now looked hard at Edward. "Oh, Mr. Brookenham's, I feel, any day. It's even with you,
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