Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/112

Rh It's very romantic and all that to put out helping hands to people with classic profiles and lazy blue eyes, but"

"But you think it's more meritorious to help old washer-women who squint? Well, if it had been a squinting washer-woman I'd exchanged yells with, and she'd told me she was looking for work, I do think I should have felt inclined to send the washing to her. It isn't my fault that the waxwork turned into a live, classic profile. Oh, Luce, what a shock it was! I think we ought to be thankful it wasn't worse. Suppose one of the murderers had come alive!"

It was next morning at breakfast that Jane said: "I have thought it all over, and I have done with dissipation and the life of pleasure."

"Dear me!" said Lucilla across the tea-pot.

"Yes, it's—what was it old Gravy used to call it?—'morally disintegrating.' Look at us. We spend week after week in humble toil—not a breath of dissension; my will's your pleasure, and your pleasure's my law. We might have been doves or seraphs or dormice. That's the influence of honest labour, my child. Then we go out gallivanting—become mere pleasure-seekers—and at once we fly at each other's throats like sharks or alligators. Influence of dissipation."

"That wasn't dissipation; it was the young man."

"It always is, I believe," Jane admitted; "but then, dissipation so often turns out to be the young man—at least, in books he is never quite out of it. The scenes of dazzling worldliness would be incomplete without him. Come on, let's get down to the shop."

"We shall probably find a young man there too," said Lucilla dryly.

"Oh, well—he doesn't count," Jane said. "He's all on the side of honest toil. Besides, he's got an uncle: a rich uncle, If the miserable Dix had had an uncle he might be in a very different position to-day. Come on, I say. Down with dissipation! Long live the shop!"

The shop was indeed becoming very engrossing. As more