Nanda had gathered up, for that matter, early in life, a
flower of maternal wisdom: "People talk about conscience, but it seems
to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it
there. You can let your conscience alone if you're nice to the second
housemaid." Mrs. Brook was as "nice" to Nanda as she was to Sarah
Curd--which involved, as may easily be imagined, the happiest conditions
for Sarah. "Well," she resumed, reverting to the Duchess on a final
appraisement of the girl's air, "I really think I do well by you and
that Jane wouldn't have anything to say to-day. You look awfully like
mamma," she then threw off as if for the first time of mentioning it.

"Oh Cousin Jane doesn't care for that," Nanda returned. "What I don't
look like is Aggie, for all I try."

"Ah you shouldn't try--you can do nothing with it. One must be what one
is."

Mrs. Brook was almost sententious, but Nanda, with civility, let it
pass. "No one in London touches her. She's quite by herself. When one
sees her one feels her to be the real thing."

Mrs. Brook, without harshness, wondered. "What do you mean by the real
thing?"

Even Nanda, however, had to think a moment.

"Well, the real young one. That's what Lord Petherton calls her," she
mildly joked--"'the young 'un'"

Her mother's echo was not for the joke, but for something else. "I know
what you mean. What's the use of being good?"

"Oh I didn't mean that," said Nanda. "Besides, isn't Aggie of a
goodness--?"

"I wasn't talking of her. I was asking myself what's the use of MY
being."

"Well, you can't help it any more than the Duchess can help--!"

"Ah but she could if she would!" Mrs. Brook broke in with a sharper
ring than she had yet given. "We can't help being good perhaps, if that
burden's laid on us--but there are lengths in other directions we're not
absolutely obliged to go. And what I think of when I stick in the pins,"
she went on, "is that Jane seems to me really never to have had to pay."
She appeared for a minute to brood on this till she could no longer
bear it; after which she jerked out: "Why she has never had to pay for
ANYthing!"

Nanda had by this time seated herself, taking her place, under the
interest of their talk, on her mother's sofa, where, except for the
removal of her long soft gloves, which one of her hands again and again
drew caressingly through the other, she remained very much as if she
were some friendly yet circumspect young visi