"You like him so very awfully ?" It was as if the next instant Nanda felt herself on her guard.

Yet she spoke with a certain surrender.

"Well, it's rather intoxicating to be one's self--!" She had only a drop over the choice of her term.
"So tremendously made up to, you mean--even by a little fussy ancient man?
But DOESN'T he, my dear," Mrs.Brook continued with encouragement, "make up to you ?" A supposititious spectator would certainly on this have imagined in the girl's face the delicate dawn of a sense that her mother had suddenly become vulgar, together with a general consciousness that the way to meet vulgarity was always to be frank and simple and above all to ignore.

"He makes one enjoy being liked so much--liked better, I do think, than I've ever been liked by any one." If Mrs.Brook hesitated it was, however, clearly not because she had noticed.

"Not better surely than by dear Mitchy?
Or even if you come to that by Tishy herself." Nanda's simplicity maintained itself.