The speech had for Nanda’s companion, however, no effect of pleasantry or irony, and it was a mark of the special intercourse of these good friends that though they showed each other, in manner and tone, such sustained consideration as might almost have given it the stamp of diplomacy, there was yet in it also something of that economy of expression which is the result of a common experience. The recurrence of opportunity to observe them together would have taught a spectator that—on Mrs. Brook’s side doubtless more particularly—their relation was governed by two or three remarkably established and, as might have been said, refined laws, the spirit of which was to guard against the vulgarity so often coming to the surface between parent and child. That they WERE as good friends as if Nanda had not been her daughter was a truth that no passage between them might fail in one way or another to illustrate. Nanda had gathered up, for that matter, early in life, a flower of maternal wisdom: “People talk about conscience, but it seems to me one must just bring it up to a certain point and leave it there. You can let your conscience alone if you’re nice to the second housemaid.” Mrs. Brook was as “nice” to Nanda as she was to Sarah Curd—which involved, as may easily be imagined, the happiest conditions for Sarah. “Well,” she resumed, reverting to the Duchess on a final appraisement of the girl’s air, “I really think I do well by you and that Jane wouldn’t have anything to say to-day. You look awfully like mamma,” she then threw off as if for the first time of mentioning it.
“Oh Cousin Jane doesn’t care for that,” Nanda returned. “What I don’t look like is Aggie, for all I try.”
“Ah you shouldn’t try—you can do nothing with it. One must be what one is.”
Mrs. Brook was almost sententious, but Nanda, with civility, let it pass. “No one in London touches her. She’s quite by herself. When one sees her one feels her to be the real thing.”
Mrs. Brook, without harshness, wondered. “What do you mean by the real thing?”
Even Nanda, however, had to think a moment.
“Well, the real young one. That’s what Lord Petherton calls her,” she mildly joked—“‘the young ‘un’”
Her mother’s echo was not for the joke, but for something else. “I know what you mean. What’s the use of being good?”
“Oh I didn’t mean that,” said Nanda. “Besides, isn’t Aggie of a goodness—?”
“I wasn’t talking of her. I was asking myself what’s the use of MY being.”