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"We must stop that in time."

"Do you mean by warning Mr. Longdon and requesting him immediately to tell us? That won't be very pleasant," Mrs. Brookenham noted.

"Well then wait and see."

She waited only a minute—it might have appeared she already saw. "I want him to be kind to Harold and can't help thinking he will."

"Yes, but I fancy that that will be his notion of it—keeping him from making debts. I dare say one needn't trouble about him," Brookenham added. "He can take care of himself."

"He appears to have done so pretty well all these years," she mused. "As I saw him in my childhood I see him now, and I see now that I saw then even how awfully in love he was with mamma. He's too lovely about mamma," Mrs. Brookenham pursued.

"Oh!" her husband replied.

The vivid past held her a moment. "I see now I must have known a lot as a child."

"Oh!" her companion repeated.

"I want him to take an interest in us. Above all in the children. He ought to like us"—she followed it up. "It will be a sort of 'poetic justice.' He sees the reasons for himself and we mustn't prevent it." She turned the possibilities over, but they produced a reserve. "The thing is I don't see how he CAN like Harold."