“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.”
“Then he won’t lend him money,” said Brookenham with all his grimness.