Читать книгу The Awkward Age онлайн

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"Most certainly. That's the only way not to think of it."

"Oh you young men, you young men!" his guest again murmured. He had passed on to the photograph—Vanderbank had many, too many photographs— of some other relation, and stood wiping the gold-mounted glasses through which he had been darting admirations and catching side-lights for shocks. "Don't talk nonsense," he continued as his friend attempted once more to throw in a protest; "I belong to a different period of history. There have been things this evening that have made me feel as if I had been disinterred—literally dug up from a long sleep. I assure you there have!"—he really pressed the point.

Vanderbank wondered a moment what things in particular these might be; he found himself wanting to get at everything his visitor represented, to enter into his consciousness and feel, as it were, on his side. He glanced with an intention freely sarcastic at an easy possibility. "The extraordinary vitality of Brookenham?"

Mr. Longdon, with nippers in place again, fixed on him a gravity that failed to prevent his discovering in the eyes behind them a shy reflexion of his irony. "Oh Brookenham! You must tell me all about Brookenham."