"I'm not in the least ashamed of her or aware of having at any time tried to conceal her existence!" his hostess said with spirit, yet with no show of resentment. "And I don't see really what it signifies if you have simply forgotten her yourself."
Ralph lifted a pair of finger-tips and, with thoughtful eyes on her, applied them for a moment--in no mere humorous fashion withal--as to a helpful rubbing of his head. There _was_ something he so wished to make sure of. "No, I don't think I forget. I remember--when once I know. If I don't remember I haven't known. So there it is," he said for himself even more than for his relatives. "Somehow it does signify!"--after which, however, he threw the matter off with a laugh. "Better late than never, at any rate."
"I'm glad you grant us that," Mrs. Midmore returned, "for you mustn't have the appearance, you know, of wanting to cut us down. We're not after all such a big handful."
He gave a pacifying stroke to his disturbed crop. "No, I mustn't have any appearance that doesn't fit my understanding. But suppose I should understand," he put to her the next instant, "something or other that doesn't fit my appearance?"
"Lord, mother," Molly laughed out on this, "what on earth does the clever creature mean?"
Mrs. Midmore looked at him harder, as if she herself would have liked to know, but Perry had intervened before she could make that remark, addressing his observation, however, to herself. "I'll be hanged if I see how, if he didn't hear of sweet Nan, he could have learnt so much about the rest of us."
"Mercy, brother, what a stupid speech!" Molly impatiently exclaimed. "Does it depend so on sweet Nan that anyone should take an interest----?" She went on to her brother, but looking with this, in her rich way, at their kinsman and giving that gentleman thus any number of her frankest reminders. "How was he not to take in the news that letters asked for and that letters gave?--and how at all events, for my part, am I not to be quite content that he makes no stranger of me?"
"Yes, my dear," Ralph at once declared, "it certainly can't be said that I've made any stranger of you!" He took her reminders and gave her back for them proportionate vows--in spite of which what she seemed most to have passed on to him was the name she herself had taken from her brother. Thus it was that, incongruously enough, it broke from his lips too. "'Sweet Nan, sweet Nan!'--how could a fellow _not_ be taken by a thing as charming as that? Sweet Nan, sweet Nan!"--he obeyed the oddest impulse to say it over and over. With which then, none the less, as if for avoidance of his turning silly, he addressed to his companion such a vague extenuating smile as he knew he would have taken, had it been addressed to himself, for a positive grin of aggravation.