is one, and Mr. Longdon's is one, and that makes you, bang off,
four. So there you are!" Harold gaily wound up.

"I see now why he's the rage!" Vanderbank observed to Nanda.

But Mrs. Grendon expressed to their young friend a lingering wonder. "Do
you mean you go in for the adoption--?"

"Oh Tishy!" Nanda mildly murmured.

Harold, however, had his own tact. "The dear man's taking her quite
over? Not altogether unreservedly. I'm with the governor: I think we
ought to GET something. 'Oh yes, dear man, but what do you GIVE us for
her?'--that's what _I_ should say to him. I mean, don't you know, that I
don't think she's making quite the bargain she might. If he were to
want ME I don't say he mightn't have me, but I should have it on my
conscience to make it in one way or another a good thing for my parents.
You ARE nice, old woman"--he turned to his sister--"and one can still
feel for the flower of your youth something of the wonderful 'reverence'
that we were all brought up on. For God's sake therefore--all the
more--don't really close with him till you've had another word or two
with me. I'll be hanged"--he appealed to the company again--"if he shall
have her for nothing!"

"See rather," Vanderbank said to Mrs. Grendon, "how little it's like
your really losing her that she should be able this evening fairly to
bring the dear man to you. At this rate we don't lose her--we simply get
him as well."

"Ah but is it quite the dear man's COMPANY we want?"--and Harold looked
anxious and acute. "If that's the best arrangement Nanda can make--!"

"If he hears us talking in this way, which strikes me as very horrible,"
Nanda interposed very simply and gravely, "I don't think we're likely to
get anything."

"Oh Harold's talk," Vanderbank protested, "offers, I think, an
extraordinary interest; only I'm bound to say it crushes me to the
earth. I've to make at least, as I listen to him, a big effort to bear
up. It doesn't seem long ago," he pursued to his young friend, "that
I used to feel I was in it; but the way you bring home to me, dreadful
youth, that I'm already NOT--!"

Harold looked earnest to understand. "The hungry generations tread you
down--is that it?"

Vanderbank gave a pleasant tragic headshake. "We speak a different
language."

"Ah but I think I perfectly understand yours!"

"That's just my anguish--and your advantage. It's awfully curious,"
Vanderbank went on to Nanda, "but I feel as if I must figure to h