Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/204

Rh gentleman to call. Well, we don't have callers, but we ask gentlemen to dinner—that's worse, I suppose?"

"Dinner is more emphatic than calling, certainly. Why are you beating about the bush like this, Jane? Out with it! What have you been doing?"

"I? Nothing but what you have too, so you can't score off me there. It's what we've both been doing."

"We've not done anything wrong," said Lucilla stoutly.

"Of course not—don't be silly! But have we been behaving like really nice girls?"

"You must have been talking to the servants," said Lucilla scornfully. "The voice is the voice of Jane, but the mind is the mind of 'Sweet Pansy Faces' or the 'Duke and the Dairymaid.'"

"We aren't the only people in the world."

"How true!" said Lucilla. "And you haven't got it out yet. Can't you? In plain English?"

"Well, then, do you think Mr. Dix thinks we're not behaving as ladies do behave, or do you think he looks down on us for not knowing the rules and doing just what we think we will?" "I'm quite sure he doesn't," said Lucilla; "he's not such an idiot. Why don't you ask me what I think Mr. Rochester thinks?"

"I wasn't thinking of him," said Jane. (Oh, Jane!) "I was wondering whether Mrs. Dix in New Zealand would approve of the company her dear boy's keeping."

"If you were really wondering that," said Lucilla, "it's time you had something to occupy your mind. Come along. Let that poor little worried yard measure alone and let's go and pick the rest of the black currants."

They went. "But you weren't really wondering that," said Lucilla to herself, as they crouched under the thick-leaved, strong-scented bushes. " You were thinking something quite different and yet exactly like it." Aloud she said:

"Currants are jollier to pick than gooseberries, aren't