Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/145

146 there was nothing more to do but to wonder whether their landlord would come again to-day, to-morrow, every day, every other day.

"You know," said Jane, "if dear Uncle James is going to live next door, so to speak, and if we're liable to be dropped down on at any hour of the day or night"

"He didn't drop down exactly," said Lucilla.

"Oh, didn't he? Liable to be dropped in on, then—we shall never feel safe. I do like him, too—but he's so sudden." And it was then that she explained how exactly the elder Mr. Rochester had resembled the eldest of the three bears.

To Mr. Dix, sweltering in mid-day sunshine, amid swathes of mown grass and groundsel, dock and comfrey, nettles and thistle and willow herb, came a bright vision of basket-bearing maidens in flowered gowns, all pink and green a blue and purple.

"Dinner," said one of them.

And, "You'll want to wash," said the other; "lock up the garden room when you've done, won't you? And when you come you might bring the plates and glasses off the table—and the jug of lemonade."

They spread the cloth by the fishpond—dry now and overgrown with the thorny arrogance of rambler roses all thick with the promise of countless little pointed buds.

It was a very nice dinner—the cold lamb from yesterday, and what was left of the gooseberry-pie, and lettuces and radishes, and what sounds so nice when you call it (fair white bread). The sun shone, the green leaves flickered and shivered in the soft airs of May. The peonies shone like crimson cannon-balls, and the flags stood up like spears; the birds sang, and three very contented people ate and talked and laughed together. It is idle to pretend that three is not sometimes a much better number than two. Jane realised this.

"So long as it's not four," she told herself, and ever and again her eye scanned the shadowy shrubbery beyond which lay the gates by which, if at all, the fourth must come. And the more she liked Mr. Dix—and she did go on liking