bank came in with friendly haste and with something of the
look indeed--refreshed, almost rosy, brightly brushed and quickly
buttoned--of emerging, out of breath, from pleasant ablutions and
renewals. "What a brute to have kept you waiting! I came back from work
quite begrimed. How d'ye do, how d'ye do, how d'ye do? What's the matter
with you, huddled there as if you were on a street-crossing? I want you
to think this a refuge--but not of that kind!" he laughed. "Sit
down, for heaven's sake; lie down--be happy! Of course you've made
acquaintance all--except that Mitchy's so modest! Tea, tea!"--and he
bustled to the table, where the next minute he appeared rather helpless.
"Nanda, you blessed child, do YOU mind making it? How jolly of you!--are
you all right?" He seemed, with this, for the first time, to be aware of
somebody's absence. "Your mother isn't coming? She let you come alone?
How jolly of her!" Pulling off her gloves Nanda had come immediately
to his assistance; on which, quitting the table and laying hands on Mr.
Longdon's shoulder to push him toward a sofa, he continued to talk, to
sound a note of which the humour was the exaggeration of his flurry.
"How jolly of you to be willing to come--most awfully kind! I hope she
isn't ill? Do, Mitchy, lie down. Down, Mitchy, down!--that's the only
way to keep you." He had waited for no account of Mrs. Brookenham's
health, and it might have been apparent--still to our sharp
spectator--that he found nothing wonderful in her daughter's unsupported
arrival.

"I can make tea beautifully," she said from behind her table. "Mother
showed me how this morning."

"This morning?"--and Mitchy, who, before the fire and still erect,
had declined to be laid low, greeted the simple remark with uproarious
mirth. "Dear young lady, you're the most delicious family!"

"She showed me at breakfast about the little things to do. She thought
I might have to make it here and told me to offer," the girl went on.
"I haven't yet done it this way at home--I usually have my tea upstairs.
They bring it up in a cup, all made and very weak, with a piece of
bread-and-butter in the saucer. That's because I'm so young. Tishy never
lets me touch hers either; so we had to make up for lost time. That's
what mother said"--she followed up her story, and her young distinctness
had clearly something to do with a certain pale concentration in Mr.
Longdon's face. "Mother isn't ill, but she told me already yester