she had drawn from the pleasure of half an hour with Mr.
Van--an allusion that of course immediately provoked on Mitchy's part
the liveliest interest.

"He HAS risked it at last then? How tremendously exciting! And your
mother?" he went on; after which, as she said nothing: "Did SHE see him,
I mean, and is he perhaps with her now?"

"No; she won't have come in--unless you asked."

"I didn't ask. I asked only for you."

Nanda thought an instant. "But you'll still sometimes come to see her,
won't you? I mean you won't ever give her up?"

Mitchy at this laughed out. "My dear child, you're an adorable family!"

She took it placidly enough. "That's what Mr. Van said. He said I'm
trying to make a career for her."

"Did he?" Her visitor, though without prejudice to his amusement,
appeared struck. "You must have got in with him rather deep."

She again considered. "Well, I think I did rather. He was awfully
beautiful and kind."

"Oh," Mitchy concurred, "trust him always for that!"

"He wrote me, on my note," Nanda pursued, "a tremendously good answer."

Mitchy was struck afresh. "Your note? What note?"

"To ask him to come. I wrote at the beginning of the week."

"Oh--I see" Mitchy observed as if this were rather different. "He
couldn't then of course have done less than come."

Yet his companion again thought. "I don't know."

"Oh come--I say: You do know," Mitchy laughed. "I should like to see
him--or you either!" There would have been for a continuous spectator
of these episodes an odd resemblance between the manner and all the
movements that had followed his entrance and those that had accompanied
the installation of his predecessor. He laid his hat, as Vanderbank had
done, in three places in succession and appeared to question scarcely
less the safety, somewhere, of his umbrella and the grace of retaining
in his hand his gloves. He postponed the final selection of a seat and
he looked at the objects about him while he spoke of other matters.
Quite in the same fashion indeed at last these objects impressed him.
"How charming you've made your room and what a lot of nice things you've
got!"

"That's just what Mr. Van said too. He seemed immensely struck."

But Mitchy hereupon once more had a drop to extravagance. "Can I do
nothing then but repeat him? I came, you know, to be original."

"It would be original for you," Nanda promptly returned, "to be at all
like him. But you won't," she went back, "not som