Our spectator would possibly have found too much earnestness in her face to be sure if there was also candour.

"And do you mean that YOU have had to pay-- ?" "Oh yes--all the while." With this Mrs.Brook was a little short, and also as she added as if to banish a slight awkwardness: "But don't let it discourage you." Nanda seemed an instant to weigh the advice, and the whole thing would have been striking as another touch in the picture of the odd want, on the part of each, of any sense of levity in the other.

Whatever escape, face to face, mother or daughter might ever seek would never be the humorous one--a circumstance, notwithstanding, that would not in every case have failed to make their interviews droll for a third person.

It would always indeed for such a person have produced an impression of tension beneath the surface.

"I could have done much better at the start and have lost less time," the girl at last said, "if I hadn't had the drawback of not really remembering Granny." "Oh well, _I_ remember her!" Mrs.Brook moaned with an accent that evidently struck her the next moment as so much out of place that she slightly deflected.