Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/225

226 her? Why should she have refused to come to the window to be told about where Mr. Rochester was going to live?

"You see," he went on, "it's much easier to say no if there's no audience. And I thought if I asked you coram populo you wouldn't perhaps like to say no, even if you meant it."

"No to what?"

"To Dix's idea that I should share his cottage. Do you mind?"

"No; why on earth should I?"

"Then that's all right," he said joyously, "and we're friends again, aren't we?"

"We've never been anything else," she said, sticking the jasmine in the front of her dress.

"Mayn't I have some?" he asked, and really it would have been silly and self-conscious and schoolgirlish to tell him to pick a piece for himself. So she gave him a sprig of jasmine and he put it in his coat.

"Then I'll move my traps down to-morrow," he said. "It's really very good of you."

Jane reminded him that the whole place was his uncle's. "And besides," she said, "isn't it better for Mr. Dix? Isn't it cheaper to keep house for two than for one?" she asked.

"Not quite that, perhaps," he said gravely, though his eyes were smiling, "but two people together cost less than two apart I'm told. I suppose they eat up each other's crusts. And look here. Dix and I were wondering—couldn't we have another day on the river before those new people of yours come? I wish you didn't have to have them. You ought to have the place to yourself and not be obliged to"

"And not be obliged to turn Pigs loose into it? Well, it isn't our place, you know. And I think how lucky we are to have a place at all to turn Pigs into."

"I wish you hadn't to do it."

"You'd like us to sit on a cushion and sew a silk seam?"

"I'm afraid the strawberries are over for this year," he said, "but—oh, well, let's make the best of it. Miss Craye