Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/161

162 "Why not indeed?" said Mr. Rochester.

They were all feeling the better for their tea.

"I think," said Lucilla didactically, "we ought to be most frightfully happy."

"It's not a moral obligation," said Mr. Dix, "for me, at least. It's a ravishing and irresistible compulsion. When I look at the cedars and the lawns and the fountains and think of Baker Street"

"We ought to get that fountain playing again," said Rochester, all the engineer in him leaping to life at the words; "but why Baker Street?"

"That is the name of the Inferno from which I was restored, no longer ago than yesterday, to the world where roses are red and leaves are green. Only those who have known Baker Street can see how green leaves are and feel the full colour of roses."

"I suppose you don't play tennis, Mr. Dix?" Mr. Rochester asked abruptly.

"I didn't in Baker Street, of course," Mr. Dix answered serenely, "but in other spheres . . . You do, of course?"

"A little," said Rochester, who rather prided himself on his game.

"Oh, Mr. Dix," said Lucilla, "why weren't you here a week ago? Then you'd have mown the tennis-lawn and we could have played this evening."

"I'll do it to-morrow," he said eagerly, "but it won't be much good for a week or two, I'm afraid. Still, we could knock the balls about, couldn't we? Where is the court—couldn't we go and look at it now?"

The tennis-courts had a walled space to themselves where once had been a Dutch garden, but in the far-away seventies, when people began to play lawn-tennis, young James Rochester had coaxed his father to lay down these courts—the high walls still trellised with peach and plum and pear made nets needless. It was a beautiful and most unusual arena for the great game.

Mr. Dix examined the turf and pronounced it not to be