Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/199

200 clothed, as Jane said afterwards, like Solomon in all his glory, and said almost bashfully: "Please, miss, may I stay out till ten? I'm going to drink tea with Mr. Simmons's sister as he lives with."

Her conscious simper spoke volumes.

The presence of the paying guests was indeed hard to bear. The black blight deepened every day. It was only by constantly reminding themselves and each other that it meant nine guineas a week that they were able to bear it at all. Regular meals, in the dining-room, every day, and no picnics or breakfasts out of doors.

"I'd no idea it would be like this," said Jane. "It's perfectly ghastly. You're never free of them. All day long and the evenings too. To think of them out in galoshes to watch us play tennis!"

"We must bear it,"said Lucilla. "Three hundred and sixteen pounds a year. I worked it out on a bit of paper."

"I suppose they have some good qualities," said Jane. "All right, we'll try to bear it."

And they did bear it—for nearly a fortnight.

Then one day Gladys abruptly asked if they had seen the colour of the visitors' money. They reproved her. But the question rankled. When it had formed the chief subject of their conversation for some days the girls decided that Lucilla should ask the guests to pay weekly.

"Certainly," said Mrs. Smale, with almost the first smile they had seen on her large, pale countenance. "We usually pay monthly, but if you prefer it I will write a cheque in the morning."

But she did not write a cheque in the morning, or, if she did, it was not drawn to Lucilla's order nor to Jane's. For in the morning there was no one to drink the three cups of tea or eat the three plethoric breakfasts. The potato-faced ladies had gone from Cedar Court. No one ever knew at what hour in the night they had crept hence; no one knew how they got their luggage away.

"They ain't slep' in their beds, nor yet they ain't washed