e
would have completed there on the morrow--weeks that had been--she made
no secret of it--the happiest she had yet spent anywhere. The greyish
day was soft and still and the sky faintly marbled, while the more newly
arrived of the visitors from London, who had come late on the Friday
afternoon, lounged away the morning in an attitude every relaxed line
of which referred to the holiday he had, as it were--at first merely
looking about and victualling--sat down in front of as a captain before
a city. There were sitting-places, just there, out of the full light,
cushioned benches in the thick wide spread of old mulberry-boughs. A
large book of facts lay in the young man's lap, and Nanda had come out
to him, half an hour before luncheon, somewhat as Beatrice came out to
Benedick: not to call him immediately indeed to the meal, but mentioning
promptly that she had come at a bidding. Mr. Longdon had rebuked her, it
appeared, for her want of attention to their guest, showing her in
this way, to her pleasure, how far he had gone toward taking her, as he
called it, into the house.

"You've been thinking of yourself," Vanderbank asked, "as a mere clerk
at a salary, and you now find that you're a partner and have a share in
the concern?"

"It seems to be something like that. But doesn't a partner put in
something? What have I put in?"

"Well--ME, for one thing. Isn't it your being here that has brought me
down?"

"Do you mean you wouldn't have come for him alone? Then don't you make
anything of his attraction? You ought to," said Nanda, "when he likes
you so."

Vanderbank, longing for a river, was in white flannels, and he took
her question with a happy laugh, a handsome face of good humour that
completed the effect of his long, cool fairness. "Do you mind my just
sitting still, do you mind letting me smoke and staying with me a while?
Perhaps after a little we'll walk about--shan't we? But face to face
with this dear old house, in this jolly old nook, one's too contented
to move, lest raising a finger even should break the spell. What WILL be
perfect will be your just sitting down--DO sit down--and scolding me a
little. That, my dear Nanda, will deepen the peace." Some minutes later,
while, near him but in another chair, she fingered the impossible book,
as she pronounced it, that she had taken from him, he came back to what
she had last said. "Has he talked to you much about his 'liking' me?"

Nanda waited a minute, tur