Mr. Longdon again took him up. “What do you people call a long time?” Vanderbank considered. “Ah there you are! And now we’re ‘we people’! That’s right--give it to us. I’m sure that in one way or another it’s all earned. Well, I’ve known her ten years. But awfully well.” “What do you call awfully well?” “We people?” Vanderbank’s enquirer, with his continued restless observation, moving nearer, the young man had laid on his shoulder the lightest of friendly hands. “Don’t you perhaps ask too much? But no,” he added quickly and gaily, “of course you don’t: if I don’t look out I shall have exactly the effect on you I don’t want. I dare say I don’t know HOW well I know Mrs. Brookenham. Mustn’t that sort of thing be put in a manner to the proof? What I meant to say just now was that I wouldn’t--at least I hope I shouldn’t--have named her as I did save to an old friend.” Mr. Longdon looked promptly satisfied and reassured. “You probably heard me address her myself.” “I did, but you’ve your rights, and that wouldn’t excuse me. The only thing is that I go to see her every Sunday.” Mr. Longdon pondered and then, a little to Vanderbank’s surprise, at any rate to his deeper amusement, candidly asked: “Only Fernanda? No other lady?” “Oh yes, several other ladies.” Mr. Longdon appeared to hear this with pleasure. “You’re quite right. We don’t make enough of Sunday at Beccles.” “Oh we make plenty of it in London!” Vanderbank said. “And I think it’s rather in my interest I should mention that Mrs. Brookenham calls ME--” His visitor covered him now with an attention that just operated as a check. “By your Christian name?” Before Vanderbank could in any degree attenuate “What IS your Christian name?” Mr. Longdon asked. Vanderbank felt of a sudden almost guilty--as if his answer could only impute extravagance to the lady. “My Christian name”--he blushed it out--“is Gustavus.” His friend took a droll conscious leap. “And she calls you Gussy?” “No, not even Gussy. But I scarcely think I ought to tell you,” he pursued, “if she herself gave you no glimpse of the fact. Any implication that she consciously avoided it might make you see deeper depths.” He spoke with pointed levity, but his companion showed him after an instant a face just covered--and a little painfully--with the vision of the possibility brushed away by the joke. “Oh I’m not so bad as that!” Mr. Longdon modestly ejaculated. “Well, she doesn’t do it always,” Vanderbank laughed, “and it’s nothing moreover to what some people are called. Why, there was a fellow there--” He pulled up, however, and, thinking better of it, selected another instance. “The Duchess--weren’t you introduced to the Duchess?--never calls me anything but ‘Vanderbank’ unless she calls me ‘caro mio.’ It wouldn’t have taken much to make her appeal to YOU with an ‘I say, Longdon!’ I can quite hear her.”