Vanderbank hesitated, and the look he fixed on the door might have suggested a certain open attention to the arrival of their hostess or the announcement of other guests. “If you haven’t got them all, the beneficiaries, you’ve got, in having me, I should suppose, about the biggest.” “Ah what has he done for you?” Nanda asked. Again her friend hung fire. “Do you remember something you said to me down there in August?” She looked vague but quite unembarrassed. “I remember but too well that I chattered.” “You declared to me that you knew everything.” “Oh yes--and I said so to Mitchy too.” “Well, my dear child, you don’t.” “Because I don’t know--?” “Yes, what makes ME the victim of his insatiable benevolence.” “Ah well, if you’ve no doubt of it yourself that’s all that’s required. I’m quite GLAD to hear of something I don’t know,” Nanda pursued. “And we’re to have Harold too,” she repeated. “As a beneficiary? Then we SHALL fill up! Harold will give us a stamp.” “Won’t he? I hear of nothing but his success. Mother wrote me that people are frantic for him; and,” said the girl after an instant, “do you know what Cousin Jane wrote me?” “What WOULD she now? I’m trying to think.” Nanda relieved him of this effort. “Why that mother has transferred to him all the scruples she felt--‘even to excess’--in MY time, about what we might pick up among you all that wouldn’t be good for us.” “That’s a neat one for ME!” Vanderbank declared. “And I like your talk about your antediluvian ‘time.’” “Oh it’s all over.” “What exactly is it,” Vanderbank presently demanded, “that you describe in that manner?” “Well, my little hour. And the danger of picking up.” “There’s none of it here?” Nanda appeared frankly to judge. “No--because, really, Tishy, don’t you see? is natural. We just talk.” Vanderbank showed his interest. “Whereas at your mother’s--?” “Well, you were all afraid.” Vanderbank laughed straight out. “Do you mind my telling her that?” “Oh she knows it. I’ve heard her say herself you were.” “Ah _I_ was,” he concurred. “You know we’ve spoken of that before.” “I’m speaking now of all of you,” said Nanda. “But it was she who was most so, for she tried--I know she did, she told me so--to control you. And it was when, you were most controlled--!” Van’s amusement took it up. “That we were most detrimental?” “Yes, because of course what’s so awfully unutterable is just what we most notice. Tishy knows that,” Nanda wonderfully observed. As the reflexion of her tone might have been caught by an observer in Vanderbank’s face it was in all probability caught by his interlocutress, who superficially, however, need have recognised there--what was all she showed--but the right manner of waiting for dinner. “The better way then is to dash right in? That’s what our friend here does?” “Oh you know what she does!” the girl replied as with a sudden drop of interest in the question. She turned at the moment to the opening of the door.