THE AWKWARD AGE
took it in. "He changed his mind out there on the stairs."
"Well," said Edward, "it won't be the first mind that has been changed there. It's about the only thing a man can change."
"Do you refer particularly to my stairs?" she asked with her whimsical woe. But meanwhile she had taken it in. "Then whom were you speaking of?"
"Mr. Longdon's coming to tea with her. She has had a note."
"But when did he come to town?"
"Last night, I believe. The note, an hour or two ago, announced him—brought by hand and hoping she would be at home."
Mrs. Brook thought again. "I'm glad she is. He's too sweet. By hand!—it must have been so he sent them to mamma. He wouldn't for the world wire."
"Oh, Nanda has often wired to him," her father returned.
"Then she ought to be ashamed of herself. But how," said Mrs. Brook, "do you know?"
"Oh, I know when we're in a thing like this."
"Yet you complain of her want of intimacy with you! It turns out that you're as thick as thieves."
Edward looked at this charge as he looked at all old friends, without a sign—to call a sign—of recognition. "I don't know of whose want of intimacy with me I've ever complained. There isn't much more of it, that I can see, that any of them could put on. What do you suppose I'd have them do? If I, on my side, don't get very far, I may have alluded to that."
"Oh, but you do," Mrs. Brook declared. "You think you don't, but you get very far indeed. You're always, as I said just now bringing out something that you've got somewhere."
378
