Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/169

170 on—we must get down to the shop. We can go on talking there."

"You," said Lucilla, finishing the last of the toast, "can go on talking anywhere."

"Cat!" said Jane calmly. "What was it the cook called Gladys when they had that row about the rag-and-bottle man? 'Cat! Fish-faced cat!'"

Thus on the morning after their accession to the crown of their dreams did the two angels of Mr. Dix and Mr. Rochester ingenuously converse.

Mr. Rochester meanwhile was deciding with belated tact to leave Cedar Court alone for two or three days, or at least for a day or two—or for this day at any rate. Mr. Dix was toiling at the tennis-lawn, having by candlelight prepared a long list of seeds and plants, which he presented to Jane when she strolled down about twelve o'clock with a full jug held carefully and the announcement that she had just come to see how he was getting on.

"It's only cold tea," she said. "I know gardeners generally drink beer all the time out of round earthenware bottles. Only we haven't any beer. There's lemon in the tea though. You'll have to drink out of the jug. It isn't bad."

"I should jolly well think it wasn't!" he answered, lifting his flushed face from a long pull at the jug. "I think you have the most beautiful ideas of anyone I ever knew. Fancy you thinking of beer!"

"We only thought of it," she protested; "what really happened was tea."

"Ah, but the idea was a great one. You hitched your wagon to a star. Look here, can I have these, or some of them?" he added hastily, seeing her eye travel down about ten inches of careful handwriting.

"If it's necessary, of course. But I thought you only sowed things in the spring?"

"These are for the winter and for next year," he said.

"But—I expect you'll get something much better quite