. "It's so charming being liked without being
approved."

But Mrs. Brook only wanted to know. "He doesn't approve--?"

"No, but it makes no difference. It's all exactly right--it doesn't
matter."

Mrs. Brook seemed to wonder, however, exactly how these things could
be. "He doesn't want you to give up anything?" She looked as if swiftly
thinking what Nanda MIGHT give up.

"Oh yes, everything."

It was as if for an instant she found her daughter inscrutable; then she
had a strange smile. "Me?"

The girl was perfectly prompt. "Everything. But he wouldn't like me
nearly so much if I really did."

Her mother had a further pause. "Does he want to ADOPT you?" Then more
quickly and sadly, though also a little as if lacking nerve to push the
research: "We couldn't give you up, Nanda."

"Thank you so much, mamma. But we shan't be very much tried," Nanda
said, "because what it comes to seems to be that I'm really what you may
call adopting HIM. I mean I'm little by little changing him--gradually
showing him that, as I couldn't possibly have been different, and as
also of course one can't keep giving up, the only way is for him not to
mind, and to take me just as I am. That, don't you see? is what he would
never have expected to do."

Mrs. Brook recognised in a manner the explanation, but still had her
wistfulness. "But--a--to take you, 'as you are,' WHERE?"

"Well, to the South Kensington Museum."

"Oh!" said Mrs. Brook. Then, however, in a more exemplary tone: "Do you
enjoy so very much your long hours with him?"

Nanda appeared for an instant to think how to express it. "Well, we're
great friends."

"And always talking about Granny?"

"Oh no--really almost never now."

"He doesn't think so awfully much of her?" There was an oddity of
eagerness in the question--a hope, a kind of dash, for something that
might have been in Nanda's interest.

The girl met these things only with obliging gravity. "I think he's
losing any sense of my likeness. He's too used to it--or too many things
that are too different now cover it up."

"Well," said Mrs. Brook as she took this in, "I think it's awfully
clever of you to get only the good of him and have none of the worry."

Nanda wondered. "The worry?"

"You leave that all to ME," her mother went on, but quite forgivingly.
"I hope at any rate that the good, for you, will be real."

"Real?" the girl, remaining vague, again echoed.

Mrs. Brook showed for this not perhaps