Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/130

Rh "Oh, bother!" said Jane. "And it's no good trying to strike a match in this waterfall."

"Jane," said Lucilla, pointing, "what's that?"

"What?"

"Out there on the footpath."

"It's a key," said Jane. "It's the key." It was.

In falling from Lucilla's hand it must have struck the horizontal iron of the gate and rebounded out towards the road—well beyond their reach. "We're locked in," said Lucilla.

"And we're locked out," said Jane.

"If we'd only got an umbrella!" sighed Lucilla.

"Someone else's, then, with a crook handle. Ours are both knobs, you know."

"Couldn't we cut a crooked stick in the shrubbery?"

"Nothing easier," said Jane bitterly, "if we had a knife."

"Couldn't we break one off?"

"If we knew where to find the kind of stick we want, and could find it in this pitch-dark Niagara."

"We must wait; perhaps someone will go by and we can ask them to pick it up for us."

"We may wait," said Jane. "It must be past midnight—everyone about here goes to bed at nine, I believe. Let me think."

Lucilla was obediently silent. There was no sound but the patter-patter of the rain on stone and gravel and dripping leaves and mackintoshes. The lost key lay before them glistening in the light of the lonely gas-lamp—perfectly visible, wholly unattainable. At last Lucilla giggled softly but naturally.

"You say everything's a lark," she said. "What about this? Not much lark about this, Jane?"

"Yes, there is!" said Jane instantly. "It's a tremendous lark really—a real adventure—something to talk about for years. It'll make a lovely story—a splendid joke, and at our own expense too, as the best jokes always are. And there's