Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/116

Rh One of Aunt Lucy's prettiest tea-cloths embroidered in soft blues and pinks lay between Aunt Lucy's Sheraton tea-tray and the round table. Aunt Lucy's silver tea-service littered upon it among the blue and white of the Chinese cups and saucers. There were flowers, in studied moderation: a few rosy tulips, half a dozen flags among Solomon's seal, and some purple lilac—but you cannot be moderate with lilac.

Both girls were a little es: when you wear opaque pinafores all the week you desire on Sundays the delicate silky-diaphanous.

It was five o'clock, and the kettle had boiled on the spirit-lamp and had been suppressed because the visitor had not arrived, and it was no use making tea yet. There had been rain in the morning, and every leaf and bud of the garden was newly washed and sparkling in the sun.

Lucilla was conscious of a sudden relenting.

"Do you know," she said, "I'm almost glad you did ask him. Think what it will be to him to see a garden like this after prison."

"Or even after London," said Jane. "Hush, here he is!"

But it was not Mr. Dix. It was a much older man. He came in at the open door, and he did not say, "How do you do?" or "How are you?" or "Good afternoon," or any of the things that Mr. Dix might have been expected to say. He looked at the flowers, looked at the tea-table, and he looked at the walls—and then he said in a voice (as Jane remarked later) exactly like the voice of the biggest of the three bears in the story:

"Who's been messing about with the panelling?"

And he had every right to ask, for he was their landlord, Mr. James Rochester, unexpectedly returned from Spain. And at any moment the footstep of the prison bird Dix might sound on the gravel.

"Who did this?" repeated Mr. James Rochester, more like the bear than ever.