Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/235

236 "But I can't appear in a bonnet, in my own house, in the evening!"

"Caps, dear—there must be caps."

"I wish you wouldn't. Couldn't the aunt be suddenly ill? Not able to see anyone?"

"Then Mrs. Rochester would keep on coming till the aunt was better. And bring flowers. And grapes. And leave cards. And pump the servants. No, we've got to go through with it."

"What shall we say to Mr. Hugo?"

"Tell him the truth—say we're doing it for a lark. So we are."

"Yes," said Jane, and the third-class railway carriage rang to the music of young laughter.

"That's what it means in books when it says 'hollow mirth,'" said Jane.

"Or the laughter of despair," suggested Lucilla; "but I call it a jolt-head jest myself."

"There aren't," said Jane, "any polite words for what I call it. And yet it's a sort of lark too, after all, isn't it?" she ended appealingly.

"Very sort-of," said Lucilla.