Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/158

Rh "Oh!" said Rochester, stiffening. "You lodge your gardener then?"

"We can now, you see," Jane explained. "That's the best of it. Did you notice whether there were any blankets, Lucy?"

Lucy hadn't, and Jane flitted out up the narrow stairs to settle this serious question.

Lucilla and Rochester stood outside the door under the climbing cherry-coloured rose, waiting for her. Lucilla noted that his brow was thunderous, his lips closely set.

"I am afraid," she thought to him, "that you are a very bad-tempered man. I don't care—I'll rub it in, then."

"I do hope you'll like Mr. Dix," she said, "He seems awfully nice. So kind and—and sunny."

"Sweet fellow," said Mr. Rochester.

"And I don't think really it was so very rash of Jane to insist on having him for a gardener. Do you?"

"I've no means of judging," he said, still black as thunder. And then Jane joined them with the information that there were plenty of blankets but they seemed to be rather damp.

"It would never do for Mr. Dix to take cold," said Rochester politely. "Can I light a fire and fill hot-water bottles or anything?"

Jane looked at him curiously.

"No, thank you," she said. "Mr. Dix isn't at all helpless. I think he'll manage here splendidly. Thank you so much for showing us everything, I do like this cottage—I think it's perfectly ducky."

"I'm glad there's something you like," he said; and again she looked curiously at him.

"Oh, but I love it all! It's splendid!" she said. "It's so splendid that I feel knocked all of a heap—don't you, Lucy?" "Emptied out of a sack," said Lucilla, who had just finished reading Sandra Belloni.

"And now I think we'd better show Mr. Dix his house and then get home. No, we needn't unlock the garden room again—we have everything."