or
yourself."

"Yes--I'm rather slow; but I generally end by finding out. And I've got,
thank heaven," said Mr. Longdon, "quite prejudices enough."

"Then I hope you'll tell me some of them," Nanda replied in a tone
evidently marking how much he pleased her.

"Ah you must do as _I_ do--you must find out for yourself. Your
resemblance to your grandmother is quite prodigious," he immediately
added.

"That's what I wish you'd tell me about--your recollection of her and
your wonderful feeling about her. Mother has told me things, but that I
should have something straight from you is exactly what she also wants.
My grandmother must have been awfully nice," the girl rambled on, "and I
somehow don't see myself at all as the same sort of person."

"Oh I don't say you're in the least the same sort: all I allude to,"
Mr. Longdon returned, "is the miracle of the physical heredity. Nothing
could be less like her than your manner and your talk."

Nanda looked at him with all her honesty. "They're not so good, you must
think."

He hung fire an instant, but was as honest as she. "You're separated
from her by a gulf--and not only of time. Personally, you see, you
breathe a different air."

She thought--she quite took it in. "Of course. And you breathe the
same--the same old one, I mean, as my grandmother."

"The same old one," Mr. Longdon smiled, "as much as possible. Some day
I'll tell you more of what you're curious of. I can't go into it now."

"Because I've upset you so?" Nanda frankly asked.

"That's one of the reasons."

"I think I can see another too," she observed after a moment. "You're
not sure how much I shall understand. But I shall understand," she went
on, "more, perhaps, than you think. In fact," she said earnestly, "I
PROMISE to understand. I've some imagination. Had my grandmother?"
she asked. Her actual sequences were not rapid, but she had already
anticipated him. "I've thought of that before, because I put the same
question to mother."

"And what did your mother say?"

"'Imagination--dear mamma? Not a grain!'"

The old man showed a faint flush. "Your mother then has a supply that
makes up for it."

The girl fixed him on this with a deeper attention. "You don't like her
having said that."

His colour came stronger, though a slightly strained smile did what it
could to diffuse coolness. "I don't care a single scrap, my dear, in
respect to the friend I'm speaking of, for any judgement but my own.