Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/157

Rh with glue and tacks. If the buyers don't look out when they're buying, so much the worse for them. The old furniture was made to last and it was bought to keep—to be handed down from father to son and mother to daughter."

"How nice!" said Lucilla, detained by politeness while Jane explored shelves and chiffoniers. "That's what I think is so jolly about Hope Cottage—my aunt having lived there when she was young and her people before her."

"Yes," said Mr. Rochester, one eye on Jane and one on the conversation. "In the old days young couples set up house with what could be spared from the furniture at home with a few new pieces made for them. In those days, you know, a man ordered his furniture to measure as he orders his coat now—chose the wood, the shape, the size, the fittings, the handles, the drawers and the shelves, and so on. Now the young people go to Tottenham Court Road and order home a houseful—or a flatful—of gimcrack rubbish, sticky with varnish, with imitation brass, imitation inlay, and machine-carving. There'll be none of it left to leave to their children—that's one comfort. It'll all break up before its owners do, even. But I go maundering on. Forgive me. It's a subject I feel rather strongly about."

"Oh, so do I," said Lucilla kindly. But he said no more; only, asking leave to light a cigarette, leaned out of the window among the framing vines and smoked in silence, broken after a few minutes by Lucilla's ingenuous, "I wasn't bored about the furniture, Mr. Rochester, I liked it, really!" And even then he said no more, only smiled at her, and went on smoking.

Jane meanwhile ran upstairs and down, peered into cupboards and up chimneys, with an alertness which she had not shown in Cedar Court. "I believe you'd rather have this place than Cedar Court," said Rochester at last, when he and Lucilla had followed Jane to the wash-house.

"Not at all," said Jane cheerfully, replacing the lid on the copper. "I was only thinking it would be the very thing for Mr. Dix."