Harold. He gave me all the family news."

"And what IS the family news?" the girl after a minute enquired.

"Well, the first great item is that he himself--"

"Wanted," Nanda broke in, "to borrow five pounds of you? I say that,"
she added, "because if he wrote to you--"

"It couldn't have been in such a case for the simple pleasure of the
intercourse?" Vanderbank hesitated, but continued not to look at her.
"What do you know, pray, of poor Harold's borrowings?"

"Oh I know as I know other things. Don't I know everything?"

"DO you? I should rather ask," the young man gaily enough replied.

"Why should I not? How should I not? You know what I know." Then as to
explain herself and attenuate a little the sudden emphasis with which
she had spoken: "I remember your once telling me that I must take in
things at my pores."

Her companion stared, but with his laugh again changed his posture.
"That you' must--?"

"That I do--and you were quite right."

"And when did I make this extraordinary charge?"

"Ah then," said Nanda, "you admit it IS a charge. It was a long time
ago--when I was a little girl. Which made it worse!" she dropped.

It made it at all events now for Vanderbank more amusing. "Ah not
worse--better!"

She thought a moment. "Because in that case I mightn't have understood?
But that I do understand is just what you've always meant."

"'Always,' my dear Nanda? I feel somehow," he rejoined very kindly, "as
if you overwhelmed me!"

"You 'feel' as if I did--but the reality is just that I don't. The day
I overwhelm you, Mr. Van--!" She let that pass, however; there was too
much to say about it and there was something else much simpler. "Girls
understand now. It has got to be faced, as Tishy says."

"Oh well," Vanderbank laughed, "we don't require Tishy to point that out
to us. What are we all doing most of the time but trying to face it?"

"Doing? Aren't you doing rather something very different? You're just
trying to dodge it. You're trying to make believe--not perhaps to
yourselves but to US--that it isn't so."

"But surely you don't want us to be any worse!"

She shook her head with brisk gravity. "We don't care really what you
are."

His amusement now dropped to her straighter. "Your 'we' is awfully
beautiful. It's charming to hear you speak for the whole lovely lot.
Only you speak, you know, as if you were just the class apart that you
yet complain of our--by our scruples--implying you to be