Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/104

Rh And then a custodian was upon them asking questions, and a vista opened up of possible unpleasantness for everybody.

"What's the matter, miss?" he asked, as one who has a right to know. "This young man been annoying you?"

"Certainly not," said Jane, with an almost convulsive but successful clutch at her self-possession. "We were only laughing."

"Funny sort of laugh," said the custodian sourly.

"It does sound so to strangers," Jane explained; "all our family laugh like that," she added a little wildly.

"You know the young man then?" said the custodian grudgingly.

"Of course I do," said Jane. "He's my brother, and he fell asleep and I woke him up and then we all laughed. It's nothing to make a fuss about. Come along, Bill, or we shall be late for tea and Aunt Emma will be furious."

She actually, as she wondered afterwards to remember, took the arm of the stranger and led him away from the 'house of the pale-fronted images'. The three moved in a stricken silence, the young man walking as in a dream, and it was not till they were a couple of hundred yards down the road that he spoke, and his voice was a very pleasant one.

"How splendid of you! How you carried it off!"

"I appear to be carrying you off," said Jane, "but it seemed the only way. That man had prison and fines and all sorts of things in his eye. I don't know what they can do to you for screaming in public buildings, but, whatever it is, that man would have seen to it that they did it."

"Such presence of mind," said the youth—he was hardly more—"and so very, very decent of you to rescue me. I don't deserve it, after frightening you like that with my yells. But I was dreaming, and something woke me up suddenly."

"I did," said Jane, "and then I yelled. We'd been frightening ourselves with the Chamber of Horrors—and then . . . Well, you see, it was like this . . ."

"You can't stand here explaining things on the pavement —everybody's staring at us. Let's go and have some tea—yes,