Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/100



" here," said Jane one morning as they sat in their shop, now almost wholly oak and bearing but few gas-green streaks on its furthest wall, "we've been at it now for over three weeks and we haven't had a single holiday. Here we are, in London, or as good as, and we haven't seen a picture gallery or a museum. We haven't seen Madame Tussaud's or the Thames, except just crossing the bridge that first evening; we haven't seen the Tower or or the Houses of Parliament; we haven't been to a theatre."

"We couldn't do that, anyhow, without a chaperone." You see how very old-fashioned Lucilla was.

"Yes, we could—matinées," said Jane, who was old-fashioned too. "They're quite respectable. The only difficulty is the shop. Really business people never leave the shop."

"I've sometimes thought," said Lucilla, "that perhaps there's something almost slavish about our opening the shop on Mondays. We took ninepence last Monday and one-and-a-penny the Monday before, and the Monday before that we took nothing, and I lost my green bag coming down with two shillings and a pair of perfectly good gloves in it."

"You're quite right," said Jane, "we mustn't make an idol of the shop. That's bowing down to Mammon, and you end in frock-coats and top-hats, and buying up the country seats of impoverished county families, and being road-hogs, and getting titles if you bow down long enough. Business is a good servant but a bad master. I'm sure I've read that somewhere. Look here, we'll take a holiday next Monday—at least, a half-holiday. We took that one-and-ninepence in