I think
you do know, don't you?--I'm nearly as much attached to her as you are."

Mr. Longdon had looked suddenly apprehensive and even a trifle
embarrassed, but he spoke with due presence of mind. "Of course I
understand that perfectly. If you hadn't liked her so much--"

"Well?" said Mitchy as he checked himself.

"I would never, last year, have gone to stay with you."

"Thank you!" Mitchy laughed.

"Though I like you also--and extremely," Mr. Longdon gravely pursued,
"for yourself."

Mitchy made a sign of acknowledgement. "You like me better for HER than
you do for anybody else BUT myself."

"You put it, I think, correctly. Of course I've not seen so much
of Nanda--if between my age and hers, that is, any real contact is
possible--without knowing that she now regards you as one of the very
best of her friends, treating you, I find myself suspecting, with a
degree of confidence--"

Mitchy gave a laugh of interruption. "That she doesn't show even to
you?"

Mr. Longdon's poised glasses faced him. "Even! I don't mind, as the
opportunity has come up, telling you frankly--and as from my time of
life to your own--all the comfort I take in the sense that in any case
of need or trouble she might look to you for whatever advice or support
the crisis should demand."

"She has told you she feels I'd be there?" Mitchy after an instant
asked.

"I'm not sure," his friend replied, "that I ought quite to mention
anything she has 'told' me. I speak of what I've made out myself."

"Then I thank you more than I can say for your penetration. Her mother,
I should let you know," Mitchy continued, "is with her just now."

Mr. Longdon took off his glasses with a jerk. "Has anything happened to
her?"

"To account for the fact I refer to?" Mitchy said in amusement at his
start. "She's not ill, that I know of, thank goodness, and she hasn't
broken her leg. But something, none the less, has happened to her--that
I think I may say. To tell you all in a word, it's the reason, such as
it is, of my being here to meet you. Mrs. Brook asked me to wait. She'll
see you herself some other time."

Mr. Longdon wondered. "And Nanda too?"

"Oh that must be between yourselves. Only, while I keep you here--"

"She understands my delay?"

Mitchy thought. "Mrs. Brook must have explained." Then as his companion
took this in silence, "But you don't like it?" he asked.

"It only comes to me that Mrs. Brook's explanations--!"

"Are often s