Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/126

Rh that young man's at his last penny. Why on earth didn't we make him give us his address? Perhaps he's starving. He may die—and we shall never know—and we might have helped him. No, Lucy, it's no comfort to me to think that I can find a suffering charwoman and help her, I wanted to help Mr. Dix."

"Yes, I know, dear," said Lucilla meaningly.

"Cat!" said Jane, but without malice. "It isn't because he's a good-looking young man. At least," she added, with one of her flashes of candour, "if it is, I can't help it. Perhaps it's natural for us to be more interested in good-looking young men than in plain old charwomen. Yes, I'm sure it's natural. It would be, if you come to think of it. I'm not ashamed of it. And people can be interested in good-looking young men without any Romeo nonsense too. I know they can. Because I am."

"Yes," said Lucilla dryly. "I see you are. Yes."

"Yes—and so are you, Luce, so don't pretend! Only you're ashamed of it and I'm not! I can't exactly express . . . but I will . . . Let me see. It's like this. This is why I'm so annoyed at our losing Mr. Dix. It's as if we'd lost a stray dog. No—not that exactly. But you see you can't take a tremendous interest in a young man just because he is a young man. Look at the organist at school—and all the awful young men that Gladys used to go out with. But when he's nice, and a gentleman, and when you've frightened each other into screams, and when he wants to be a gardener and you've got a garden that wants to be gardened—well, it all seems so heaven-sent—so expressly arranged by Fate, so that you shall be interested—and then—down comes the curtain—it's all over."

"Oh well," said Lucilla, "if you put it like that . . ." and, basket-laden, they reached the gate of Hope Cottage.

It was not till ten o'clock that they found out that they had left the silver tea-pot and milk-jug and sugar-basin and spoons and sugar-tongs in the cupboard with the other tea-things in the garden room at the Cedars. To continue to