Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/139

140 here to-night and we shall be round about ten. There's a tap just outside the door when you want to wash—and that big chair's quite comfortable. Where's my hat?—oh, here! Where are my gloves?—oh, there! Lucy, help me with my macker. No, please don't talk any more. Good-night, Mr. Dix. Sleep well, and don't worry. We were born lucky"

"I was," he interjected.

"Of course you were. Not another word. Good-night,"

She talked without ceasing till they had got away. The gate was padlocked behind them and his goodnight came to them through the bars. Jane clutched Lucilla's arm as they hurried home in a silence broken only by the sound of their feet splashing through puddles and by Jane's sniffs. Presently Lucilla sniffed too. And then Jane stopped to fumble for her handkerchief.

"Don't you start snivelling!" she told Lucilla sharply, "You haven't anything to cry about. You haven't done anything. You haven't made a perfectly abject idiot of yourself—and insulted one of our own soldiers who fought for us and was hurt and imprisoned and . . ." She stamped on the pavement. "Cry? What's the good? I could kick myself! Always blundering in where anyone with the least sense would at least have held her tongue. Why didn't you stop me?"

"You know it's as easy to stop a steam-roller as it is to stop you when you've got the bit between your teeth," said Lucilla with some truth. "And I wasn't crying. I've caught a cold. And really, I don't think you need worry. He thinks you're an angel."

"What does it matter what he thinks? What's the good of his thinking us angels when I know we're fools—at least, I mean me? Goodness, how wet I am I Look here—let's run. I expect we've both caught the colds of our lives!"

Jane's last words that night were: "What a day! But it has been a sort of lark too . . . all but that one awful bit."