Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/117



once Jane was speechless. It was Lucilla who rose instantly and went towards the old landlord, with both hands outstretched, delighted recognition in her eyes, and on her lips—words of wonder, indeed, but also of welcome.

"You?" she said. "How wonderful! We thought you were at the Alhambra or Bilbao or somewhere, and here you are! It is nice."

By this time Jane was almost herself again, ready to offer her hand and then to push forward the easiest chair.

"It seems rather cheek to offer you tea in your own house," she said, "but it would be worse still not to, seeing that we're here and the tea's here and you're here."

"I am sorry if I am inopportune," said the landlord, quite without cordiality. But he took the chair. And again he looked round him.

"You seem to have made yourselves thoroughly at home," he said, and he said it grudgingly.

"Yes," said Jane, preoccupied with the kettle and spirit-lamp. "And you're not a bit inopportune. In fact it's very much nicer for you to come when we're all tidy, though perhaps you'd rather have come on a working day, and found us up to our ears in wet ferns and flower-stalks, and as likely as not no tea ready—at least, it wouldn't have been such a nice tea as this, and certainly not the best cups."

"I'm glad to hear that, at any rate," he said grimly.

"Oh, of course we wouldn't use those lovely cups every day," said Lucilla, one ear for him and one for the step of the jail-bird on the gravel. Jane's ears were also doing a double,