Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/119

120 ("Come, that's something!" Jane told herself. "If we can only make him laugh!")

"Do you take milk and sugar?" she asked hastily, and acted on his reply. "Do have a cake. They aren't bought ones. Our Mrs. Doveton made them herself, out of one of Aunt Lucilla's receipt-books."

Lucilla was keeping her end up. "It's such a darling book, bound in violet morocco with gold ferns on it, and the pages are different colours—like girls' albums—and there re bits of poetry and little pictures stuck in all among the recipes. Dear little pencil sketches of ruined abbeys and thatched cottages, and little paintings of auriculas and tulips and Spanish dancers with fans and white stockings, and valentines with silver loves and cupids and the loveliest verses."

"It must be a very interesting book," said Mr. Rochester. "And does your Mrs. Doveton find her way easily among the poetry and the paintings and the recipes?"

"Oh no!" said Lucilla, shocked, "The book's never been in the kitchen. We copy out what she's to make, on the kitchen slate. We tried buying cakes—but they aren't really nice in the shops here. I can't think they're made of real eggs and butter, and they all taste of essence of lemon. Besides, the shop-people call them pastries, and that does sound so dreadful, doesn't it?"

"It does," said he, with the first glance of approval that they dared to recognise. "And I am very glad that you perceive it. The vulgarism is getting itself accepted, somehow. 'Pastries!' We shall have people talking of 'grouses' next, and 'deers' and 'snipes.' Already the Daily Yell, I understand, allows its American contributors to write of billiards-rooms, to say 'around' when they mean 'round,' and to use the expression, 'he made himself scarce,' in a serious narrative. One of the saddest things in this machine-made century," he added, "is the neglect, the decay, the corruption, of the English language."