nued at a loss and he went on: "I
refer--if you don't mind my saying so--to what you said just now."

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