to keep hold of some little idea of responsibility. I
positively can't arrange without knowing when it is you go to him."

"To Mr. Longdon? Oh whenever I like," Nanda replied very gently and
simply.

"And when shall you be so good as to like?"

"Well, he goes himself on Saturday, and if I want I can go a few days
later."

"And what day can you go if I want?" Mrs. Brook spoke as with a small
sharpness--just softened indeed in time--produced by the sight of a
freedom in her daughter's life that suddenly loomed larger than any
freedom of her own. It was still a part of the unsteadiness of the
vessel of her anxieties; but she never after all remained publicly long
subject to the influence she often comprehensively designated to others
as well as to herself as "nastiness." "What I mean is that you might go
the same day, mightn't you?"

"With him--in the train? I should think so if you wish it."

"But would HE wish it? I mean would he hate it?"

"I don't think so at all, but I can easily ask him."

Mrs. Brook's head inclined to the chimney and her eyes to the window.
"Easily?"

Nanda looked for a moment mystified by her mother's insistence. "I can
at any rate perfectly try it."

"Remembering even that mamma would never have pushed so?"

Nanda's face seemed to concede even that condition. "Well," she at all
events serenely replied, "I really think we're good friends enough for
anything."

It might have been, for the light it quickly produced, exactly what her
mother had been working to make her say. "What do you call that then, I
should like to know, but his adopting you?"

"Ah I don't know that it matters much what it's called."

"So long as it brings with it, you mean," Mrs. Brook asked, "all the
advantages?"

"Well yes," said Nanda, who had now begun dimly to smile--"call them
advantages."

Mrs. Brook had a pause. "One would be quite ready to do that if one only
knew a little more exactly what they're to consist of."

"Oh the great advantage, I feel, is doing something for HIM."

Nanda's companion, at this, hesitated afresh. "But doesn't that, my
dear, put the extravagance of your surrender to him on rather an odd
footing? Charity, love, begins at home, and if it's a question of merely
GIVING, you've objects enough for your bounty without going so far."

The girl, as her stare showed, was held a moment by her surprise, which
presently broke out. "Why, I thought you wanted me so to be nice to
him!"