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"My darling!" Her arms were round Nan's shoulders; she was kneeling among the proofs. "My little girl Nan!" "Mother...." They held each other close. It was a queer moment, though not an unprecedented one in the stormy history of their relations together.
It is illogical, of course, with that gloriously pig-headed illogicalness not infrequently to be found in the supposedly logical sex, and it would be laughable were it not that it so often ends in tragedy. So that Roger was quite genuinely dumbfounded at Nan's heterodox pronouncement on the relative values of music and babies. A baby was not in the least an object of absorbing interest to her.
Their voices rose and fell against the soft splashing of the sea; Neville's, sweet and light, with pretty cadences, Pamela's, crisp, quick and decided, Nan's, trailing a little, almost drawling sometimes. The Hilary voices were all thin, not rich and full-bodied, like Rosalind's. Mrs. Hilary's was thin, like Grandmama's. "Nice voices," thought Mrs. Hilary, languidly listening. "Nice children.
I went there in the hope that she would know where to find you, and, failing in that, I left a message for you in the hope that, since she had tricked Rorke in your behalf, you would find means of communicating with her again. But all that is entirely changed now. Your participation in that Hayden-Bond affair the other night makes Gypsy Nan's place the last in all New York to which you should go."
That is what one reads, you know, about the young gentlemen always tumbling into trouble, and always getting happily out of it, and always amusing themselves just as much as they amuse others. This was not so bad. Nan's face had brightened; she regarded him with her clear eyes. 'You are thinking of Captain Marryat, said he, laughing. 'But times have changed sadly for the middy since then.
"So France has a partial claim, on you, too?" remarked Mallory, unfolding his napkin. "Yes a great-grandmother. I let her take the burden of all my sins." "Not a very heavy one, I imagine," he returned, smiling. "I don't know. Sometimes" Nan's eyes grew suddenly pensive "sometimes I feel that one day I shall do something which will make the burden too heavy to be shunted on to great-grandmamma!
Her look of pride in her wounds was comically in contrast to her companion's distress, as his glance wandered from the little hard-worked fingers to his own white hands, almond-nailed, soft-palmed, taper-fingered, the hands of a man who has lived an idle life, and known little or nothing of the reality of work. Nan's eyes followed his, and she laughed in amused fashion.
"She will be the making of the boy!" he declared. "He has always been a good fellow, but too indifferent and lazy to make the most of his abilities. Nan's energy, Nan's enthusiasm will be his salvation! This is the best news I have heard for many a long, long year. It puts fresh life into me in my old age."
De Spain gave her a pretty accurate recital of the interview, and Nan's apprehension grew with her hearing of it. "I knew it," she repeated with conviction. "I know him better than you know him. What shall we do?" De Spain took both her hands. He held them against his breast and stood looking into her eyes. When he regarded her in such a way her doubts and fears seemed mean and trivial.
Only I misdoubt me that you'll turn the house topsy-turvey, as you always and ever did." While nurse was speaking, she was deftly and quickly changing Nan's travel-stained frock for a white one, and was tying a coral pink sash round her waist. "Now you're ready," she said, giving the little figure a final pat.
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