Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/181

182 discovery of a secret door, or at any rate a door that had been boarded up and used as a cupboard. This opened into the first storey of the round tower. What could be more ideal? Bedrooms and boudoir altogether.

"And it's to be a boudoir, too," said Jane. "A place for you and me to sulk in. No one else admitted on any pretence."

This was a Sunday afternoon. How blessed a day is Sunday to those who serve in shops, or, in any of the walks of commerce, earn their living!

"This is a most lovely room," said Jane. "The window looks out at the front, it's true, but when you're sitting down you only see the ilex and the horse-chestnut and the copper beech. Hullo . . . who on earth . . ."

A figure at once dowdy and resplendent, with a sports coat of a flannellettish pink and a large rust-red hat surrounded by jazz flowers was creeping slowly up the drive. It carried a tin hat-box and several large, straggling brown-paper parcels. It walked with a sort of tired determination; it disappeared in the porch and then the bell echoed through the house.

"It can't be a cook come about the place, on a Sunday afternoon."

"You'd think not," said Lucilla, noncommittally.

They went down and opened the door to a very hot and rather grubby girl, who instantly threw her bundles from her on to the hall table and said:

"Phew!"

It was Gladys.

"Yes," she said, "I come directly I got your letter. When I read what Miss Lucy put in about the big house you'd got and no servants yet, me mind was made up in a flash. That's the service for me, I says, and I slips off by the morning train. But what a caution them Sunday trains is—stop everywhere and people in and out on yer toes for hours and hours. Now don't say you ain't glad to see me after all."