Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/220

Rh and Mr. Dix says we ought to keep bees, and he wants us to have pigs and a cow; and we haven't the least idea how much anything costs, or how much it ought to cost—and seventeen guineas a week looks lovely, but if you don't know how much you're spending you can't tell where you are. We may be barging along the road to ruin for anything we can tell. And I don't suppose these rooms will be ready by the time these people come. And Mrs. Doveton says we ought to have in our sugar by the hundredweight, wholesale; and the drawing-room chimney wants sweeping, and we keep on saying we'll get the silver up from behind the garden-room stove, and we never do. Did you hear of people biting off more than they can chew?"

"There's nothing in all that," said Lucilla, busy with snipping scissors. "Everything's going on all right. But I'll tell you what, Jane. If you begin to turn coward, everything won't go on all right much longer."

"This place is too big," said Jane. "It eats up all one's courage."

"But we wanted a big place—to earn our living in. And we got it—by a miracle. I know we agreed that we wouldn't tell each other not to be silly. But really . . ."

"Every word you say is true," said Jane—"every single word—and I am an idiot; but there's Mr, Dix going on like an intelligent steam-engine, and Mrs. Doveton like—all right, I'll drop it. Let's talk of something else. Is that Thornton girl good-looking?" "Girl!" returned Lucilla. "She's married, to one of them—I don't know which. I must have told you that a dozen times." "Never," said Jane. "You said the tall one was her brother, but not a word about her being married to the other one. I thought they were all brothers and sisters. Hurry up—let's get these chairs done and go out and see the fountain. Mr. Rochester's made it work, but I told him not to turn it on till we came out."

She fell to work with renewed courage.