Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/167

168 this was a crisis in our affairs and that we must seriously think whether it wouldn't be better to go on as we are."

"We can't. I didn't see that last night—but you can never go on as you are. Things go on changing all the time, and you've got to change with them. Like chameleons. For the future I'm going to be a chameleon. Like this."

She made a grimace intended to represent the repellent expression of that reptile.

"I do wish you'd be serious. Honey, please, and the toast. Thank you," said Lucilla, quite crossly.

"Well, I will! Seriously, then, of course I know we were dismal last night, but why should we go on being? This isn't last night. It's this morning. We've been asleep for nine or ten hours. That's what sleep's for—to wash all the grumpiness and cowardliness and fuss away. And it does, and the little cherub wakes up as bright as a button. We lost our heads a little last night, and lost sight of our guiding principle. The great fact of life. Life is a lark-all the parts of it, I mean, that are generally treated seriously: money, and worries about money, and not being sure what's going to happen. Looked at rightly, all that's an adventure, a lark. As long as you have enough to eat and to wear and a roof to sleep under, the whole thing's a lark. Life is a lark for us, and we must treat it as such."

"It isn't a lark to the people who haven't got enough to eat and wear and sleep under," said Lucilla.

"Isn't that exactly what I'm saying? We have. And for us it is. As for the other people, all we can do is to help them when we come across them, and to keep going ourselves, or else we shan't be able to help anyone else. To make one blade of grass grow where two grew before."

"That's Mr. Dix's job."

"I meant the opposite, of course," said Jane, laughing: "two where one grew before. That's what old Gravy used to say. Upon my word, as I get on in years I begin to see that old Gravy was not wrong nearly so often as we used to think. Grown-up people often aren't, I daresay. You