Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/137

138 "It doesn't seem fair—you don't know anything about me."

"But you'll tell us all about yourself—all the rest, I mean," said Jane; "but not to-night. There's only one thing. But first, will you be our gardener?"

"I should just think I would. And you'll see. I do know something about gardening. And the 'one thing'?"

"Don't be angry with us for asking, will you?"

"Of course not," he answered, a faint surprise in his voice. Anything. . ."

"You won't be offended and rush off?"

"Of course not."

"Then," said Jane firmly, "you are going to be our gardener, and we should like to know what it was that you went to prison for."

"I was taken prisoner in 1918—had over a year of it. At Recklinghausen. And I had shell-shock. The hospital I was in—it was all very horrible. I don't a bit mind your asking, but I don't want to talk about it."

"You were a war prisoner? In Germany?"

"Yes." Then their silence and the shame in their eyes struck at him the knowledge of how different an answer it was that they had expected to hear.

"My God!" he said, almost in a whisper. "You thought I'd been in an English prison—that I was a criminal? My God!"

He sat down heavily on the chair from which he had just risen, put his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands.

The girls looked at each other miserably, questioning with their eyes. What could they do? What could they say?

"What have I done?" Jane's eyes signalled.

And Lucilla's replied with sympathy, rather deeply tinged with reproach: "Yes, indeed, what have you?"

By the pleasant light of fire and candle they could see the shoulders of the man shaken a little, as though by laughter;