Vanderbank was conscious of a deep desire to draw from him whatever might come; so sensible was it somehow that whatever in him was good was also thoroughly personal. But our young friend had to think a minute. “I see, I see. Nothing’s more probable than that I’ve said something nasty; but which of my particular horrors?” “Well then, your conveying that she makes her daughter out younger--!” “To make herself out the same?” Vanderbank took him straight up. “It was nasty my doing that? I see, I see. Yes, yes: I rather gave her away, and you’re struck by it--as is most delightful you SHOULD be--because you’re in every way of a better tradition and, knowing Mrs. Brookenham’s my friend, can’t conceive of one’s playing on a friend a trick so vulgar and odious. It strikes you also probably as the kind of thing we must be constantly doing; it strikes you that right and left, probably, we keep giving each other away. Well, I dare say we do. Yes, ‘come to think of it,’ as they say in America, we do. But what shall I tell you? Practically we all know it and allow for it and it’s as broad as it’s long. What’s London life after all? It’s tit for tat!” “Ah but what becomes of friendship?” Mr. Longdon earnestly and pleadingly asked, while he still held Vanderbank’s arm as if under the spell of the vivid explanation supplied him. The young man met his eyes only the more sociably. “Friendship?” “Friendship.” Mr. Longdon maintained the full value of the word. “Well,” his companion risked, “I dare say it isn’t in London by any means what it is at Beccles. I quite literally mean that,” Vanderbank reassuringly added; “I never really have believed in the existence of friendship in big societies--in great towns and great crowds. It’s a plant that takes time and space and air; and London society is a huge ‘squash,’ as we elegantly call it--an elbowing pushing perspiring chattering mob.” “Ah I don’t say THAT of you!” the visitor murmured with a withdrawal of his hand and a visible scruple for the sweeping concession he had evoked. “Do say it then--for God’s sake; let some one say it, so that something or other, whatever it may be, may come of it! It’s impossible to say too much--it’s impossible to say enough. There isn’t anything any one can say that I won’t agree to.” “That shows you really don’t care,” the old man returned with acuteness. “Oh we’re past saving, if that’s what you mean!” Vanderbank laughed. “You don’t care, you don’t care!” his guest repeated, “and--if I may be frank with you--I shouldn’t wonder if it were rather a pity.” “A pity I don’t care?” “You ought to, you ought to.” And Mr. Longdon paused. “May I say all I think?” “I assure you _I_ shall! You’re awfully interesting.” “So are you, if you come to that. It’s just what I’ve had in my head. There’s something I seem to make out in you--!” He abruptly dropped this, however, going on in another way. “I remember the rest of you, but why did I never see YOU?”