Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/151

152 voice was heard at the door, made Lucilla extremely anxious to get away, somehow, from the garden room. But Jane also appeared anxious for flight.

"No—I'll go," she said, and was out of the door like a flash.

"Who's that?" asked Mr. Rochester, when she was gone.

"Mr. Dix. He was going to be our gardener."

"Oh," said Mr. Rochester coldly; "why only 'was'?"

"Well—we don't need a gardener at Hope Cottage, and since we're not going to go on here . . ."

"Oh," said Mr. Rochester slowly, "I begin to see. Well, it's no use my trying to remember what I said—something more than usually idiotic, I suppose—but what I came down to say was this: my uncle is so charmed with the panelling, and the tea, and you, and Miss Quested, and everything, that he's changed his mind completely; he says you can have the whole of Cedar Court to do exactly as you like with—no restrictions. Only in return he wants to have Hope Cottage kept exactly as it is—not let—but kept as it is."

"Just as it is? No one to live in it? Like a museum?"

"More like a sacred relic of the past."

"I don't understand," said Lucilla; "but then I don't understand anything this morning. Let me go and tell Jane."

"Just a minute," said Mr. Rochester. "Who is this Mr. Dix?" "A friend of ours," said Lucilla cautiously.

"Known him long?" asked Mr. Rochester—"though, of course, I've no earthly right to ask."

"No," said Lucilla, with some spirit, "I don't think you have—any earthly."

And a gloomy silence fell between them. The young man broke it by a laugh that was not very merry.

"Why," he said, "this is like a nightmare! I couldn't sleep last night—literally and actually I couldn't sleep—for