Mr. Longdon was really deep in it. “Is she clever?”
Vanderbank turned it over. “Well, you’ll tell me if you think so.”
“Ah with a child of seventeen—!” Mr. Longdon murmured it as if in dread of having to pronounce. “This one too IS seventeen?”
Vanderbank again considered. “Eighteen.” He just hung fire once more, then brought out: “Well, call it nearly nineteen. I’ve kept her birthdays,” he laughed.
His companion caught at the idea. “Upon my honour I should like to! When is the next?”
“You’ve plenty of time—the fifteenth of June.”
“I’m only too sorry to wait.” Laying down the object he had been examining Mr. Longdon took another turn about the room, and his manner was such an appeal to his host to accept his restlessness that as he circulated the latter watched him with encouragement. “I said to you just now that I knew the mothers, but it would have been more to the point to say the grandmothers.” He stopped before his young friend, then nodded at the image of Nanda. “I knew HERS. She put it at something less.”
Vanderbank rather failed to understand. “The old lady? Put what?”
Mr. Longdon’s face showed him as for a moment feeling his way. “I’m speaking of Mrs. Brookenham. She spoke of her daughter as only sixteen.”
Vanderbank’s amusement at the tone of this broke out. “She usually does! She has done so, I think, for the last year or two.”