Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/202

Rh roast chicken every day for a week—and then go back to plain mutton for a bit."

"You would spend your whole income on food then?" Jane said innocently.

"Yes, cat, I would," said Lucilla—"or nearly all. But I shouldn't eat it all myself. I should give lots of it away. 'The Responsibilities of the Really Rich.' Let's write a book about them, Jane. You want to help the hard-up. How are you to know which are the respectable ones?"

"And why are we to care?"

"You can't help everybody, and you have to choose, and you may as well choose people your help is likely to be some help to."

"I believe everybody knows more people that help would be a help to than they have money to give the help with."

"Yes. There's our Mr. Dix—wants a market garden."

"Well, he's got it, hasn't he?" said Lucilla shortly.

"And Mr. Rochester—he wants a job."

"Not acutely, I think."

"Well, then there's our Mr. Doveton—he wants to better himself; one could help there. Mr. Simmons wants to give up carpentering and grow herbs and better the world. Gladys wants"

"Gladys wants someone to go out with—and she's got it."

"So have we, come to think of it. Lucy, do you think a chaperone could have any real objection—any just objection, I mean—to one's going on the river on Sundays with two perfectly respectable young men?"

Two such excursions had, indeed, been part of the leisured happiness of that halcyon time.

"A real chaperone might have real objections," said Lucilla. "I don't know. But we are each other's chaperones—and we have more sense."

"Yes," said Jane doubtfully. "At the same time, don't you think there's something to be said for aunts? 'The Aunt in the Home; Her Use and Abuse.' It would do for