“Oh Nanda has often wired to HIM,” her father returned.
“Then she ought to be ashamed of herself. But how,” said Mrs. Brook, “do you know?”
“Oh I know when we’re in a thing like this.”
“Yet you complain of her want of intimacy with you! It turns out that you’re as thick as thieves.”
Edward looked at this charge as he looked at all old friends, without a sign—to call a sign—of recognition. “I don’t know of whose want of intimacy with me I’ve ever complained. There isn’t much more of it, that I can see, that any of them could put on. What do you suppose I’d have them do? If I on my side don’t get very far I may have alluded to THAT.”
“Oh but you do,” Mrs. Brook declared. “You think you don’t, but you get very far indeed. You’re always, as I said just now, bringing out something that you’ve got somewhere.”
“Yes, and seeing you flare up at it. What I bring out is only what they tell me.”
This limitation offered, however, for Mrs. Brook no difficulty. “Ah but it seems to me that with the things people nowadays tell one—! What more do you want?”
“Well”—and Edward from his chair regarded the fire a while—“the difference must be in what they tell YOU.”
“Things that are better?”