Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/128

Rh "The silver's there all right. Now, look here. Do you really believe the padlock was left undone? Suppose it wasn't. Suppose someone opened it, and we disturbed them before they could get in here? If we go out carrying the silver they might attack us—to get it."

"They wouldn't know we'd got it. We could put it under our mackers."

"We should look lumpy. Yes, I know it's dark—but they may have electric torches and flash them at us. We mustn't take the silver away—we must hide it."

"Where?"

"Up the chimney, of course. It's the only place. I've been thinking. Put the candle down on the floor behind the table. Now then—hand me the things. No—one at a time. Don't let them chink."

She reached her hand up the chimney, holding the silver tea-pot. "Talk about chinking!" exclaimed Lucilla, not without some reason, for, with a devastating clatter, the tea-pot, which Jane imagined herself to be placing on a safe ledge in the obscurity of the chimney, escaped from her hand and fell into the hollow depths behind the iron grate.

"Well," said Jane, forcing a laugh, "it's safe now, anyway. We shall have to have the fireplace taken out to get it back. It's in a perfectly burglar-proof spot."

"It'll be awfully dented, I'm afraid," said Lucilla anxiously.

"All the same, I'm going to send the other things after it," said Jane. "It'll be no more trouble to get out the lot than the one."

"Well, wrap them in dusters, then, or they'll be dented to pieces."

The milk-jug and sugar-basin followed the tea-pot with what is sometimes called a sickening thud.

"And now," said Jane, standing up and rubbing her sooty hands on a third duster, "let's get out of it as quick as we can. Let's talk and laugh all the way to the gate, so that if there are burglars in hiding in the shrubbery they may not think we're frightened."