BOOK SECOND: LITTLE AGGIE
"That have even perhaps a little, after the warnings, let one down?"
Mrs. Brookenham took no notice of this pleasantry; she simply adhered to her thesis. "One has taken one's dose, and one isn't such a fool as to be deaf to some fresh, true note, if it happens to turn up. But for abject, horrid, unredeemed vileness, from beginning to end—"
"So you read to the end?" Mr. Mitchett interposed.
"I read to see what you could possibly have sent such things to me for, and because so long as they were in my hands they were not in the hands of others. Please to remember in future that the children are all over the place and that Harold and Nanda have their nose in everything."
"I promise to remember," Mr. Mitchett returned, "as soon as you make old Van do the same."
"I do make old Van—I pull old Van up much oftener than I succeed in pulling you. I must say," Mrs. Brookenham went on, "you're all getting to require, among you, in general, an amount of what one may call editing—!" She gave one of her droll universal sighs. "I've got your books, at any rate, locked up, and I wish you'd send for them quickly again; one's too nervous about anything happening and there being perhaps found among one's relics. Charming literary remains!" she laughed.
The friendly Mitchy was also much amused. "By Jove, the most awful things are found! Have you heard about old Randage and what his executors have just come across? The most abominable—"
"I haven't heard," she broke in, "and I don't want to; but you give me a shudder, and I beg you'll have your offerings removed, for I can't think of confiding them, for the purpose, to any one in this house. I might burn them up in the dead of night, but even then I should be fearfully nervous."
67
