ever!"
She was particularly positive. "Van on the contrary gives tremendous
warnings, makes apologies, in advance, for things that--well, after all,
haven't killed one."

"That have even perhaps a little, after the warnings, let one down?"

She took no notice of this coarse pleasantry, she simply adhered to her
thesis. "One has taken one's dose and one isn't such a fool as to be
deaf to some fresh true note if it happens to turn up. But for abject
horrid unredeemed vileness from beginning to end--"

"So you read to the end?" Mr. Mitchett interposed.

"I read to see what you could possibly have sent such things to me for,
and because so long as they were in my hands they were not in the hands
of others. Please to remember in future that the children are all over
the place and that Harold and Nanda have their nose in everything."

"I promise to remember," Mr. Mitchett returned, "as soon as you make old
Van do the same."

"I do make old Van--I pull old Van up much oftener than I succeed in
pulling you. I must say," Mrs. Brookenham went on, "you're all getting
to require among you in general an amount of what one may call editing!"
She gave one of her droll universal sighs. "I've got your books at any
rate locked up and I wish you'd send for them quickly again; one's too
nervous about anything happening and their being perhaps found among
one's relics. Charming literary remains!" she laughed.

The friendly Mitchy was also much amused. "By Jove, the most awful
things ARE found! Have you heard about old Randage and what his
executors have just come across? The most abominable--"

"I haven't heard," she broke in, "and I don't want to; but you give me
a shudder and I beg you'll have your offerings removed, since I can't
think of confiding them for the purpose to any one in this house. I
might burn them up in the dead of night, but even then I should be
fearfully nervous."

"I'll send then my usual messenger," said Mitchy, "a person I keep
for such jobs, thoroughly seasoned, as you may imagine, and of a
discretion--what do you call it?--a toute epreuve. Only you must let
me say that I like your terror about Harold! Do you think he spends his
time over Dr. Watts's hymns?"

Mrs. Brookenham just hesitated, and nothing, in general, was so becoming
to her as the act of hesitation. "Dear Mitchy, do you know I want
awfully to talk to you about Harold?"

"About his French reading, Mrs. Brook?" Mitchy responded with interest