THE AWKWARD AGE
"I want him to take an interest in us. Above all in the children. He ought to like us"—she followed it up. "It will be a sort of 'poetic justice.' He sees, himself, the reasons, and we mustn't prevent it." She turned the possibilities over a moment, but they produced another soft wail. "The thing is that I don't see how he can like Harold."
"Then he won't lend him money," said Brookenham.
This contingency too she considered. "You make me feel as if I wished he would—which is too dreadful. And I don't think he really likes me," she went on.
"Oh!" her husband again ejaculated.
"I mean not utterly really. He has to try to. But it won't make any difference," she next remarked.
"Do you mean his trying?" Brookenham inquired.
"No—I mean his not succeeding. He'll be just the same." She saw it steadily and saw it whole. "On account of mamma."
Her husband also, with his perfect propriety, put it before himself. "And will he—on account of your mother—also like me?"
Mrs. Brookenham weighed it. "No, Edward." She covered him with her loveliest expression. "No, not really, either. But it won't make any difference." This time she had pulled him up.
"Not if he doesn't like Harold, or like you, or like me?" Brookenham, clearly, found himself able to accept only the premise.
"He'll be perfectly loyal. It will be the advantage of mamma!" Mrs. Brookenham exclaimed. "Mamma, Edward," she brought out with a flash of solemnity—"mamma was wonderful. There have been times when I've felt that she's still with us, but Mr. Longdon makes it vivid. Whether she's with me or not, at any rate, she's with him; so that when he's with me, don't you see—?"
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