Читать книгу The Awkward Age онлайн

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"And where's the child this time?" he asked of his hostess as soon as he was seated near her.

"Why do you say 'this time' as if it were different from any other time?" she replied as she gave him his tea.

"Only because, as the months and the years elapse, it's more and more of a wonder, whenever I don't see her, to think what she does with herself —or what you do with her. What it does show, I suppose," Mr. Mitchett went on, "is that she takes no trouble to meet me."

"My dear Mitchy," said Mrs. Brookenham, "what do YOU know about 'trouble'—either poor Nanda's or mine or anybody's else? You've never had to take any in your life, you're the spoiled child of fortune and you skim over the surface of things in a way that seems often to represent you as supposing everybody else has wings. Most other people are sticking fast in their native mud."

"Mud, Mrs. Brook—mud, mud!" he protestingly cried as, while he watched his fellow visitor move to a distance with their host, he glanced about the room, taking in afresh the Louis Seize secretary which looked better closed than open and for which he always had a knowing eye. "Remarkably charming—mud!"