Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/256

Rh more like a dog after a rabbit, for there's no sitting quiet and watching about her." "But if she's fond of Herbert and he's fond of her? . . ."

"Bless you," said Mrs. Doveton, "she ain't fond of anybody. It amuses her to see 'em jigging on the end of a string, But my Herbert's a serious young man, and he looks to better himself and rise in life, and then she butts in and spoils everything for him and does herself no good. It's for all the world like a mouse falling into a pan of cream-no benefit to any of the parties concerned."

"All right," said Jane, "you speak to Herbert and I'll speak to Gladys."

"I've spoke to Herb," said Herbert's mother, "and he says not to interfere, and I don't know what roseate hues of early dawn a true woman can cast over a young man's life. Lor'," said Mrs.Doveton in a burst of exasperation, "I wish all young gells could be married and put out of the way the minute they leave school. A gell ought to be married young. It's best for her—keeps her out of mischief—and she soon gets two or three little weights hanging on to her apron-strings to keep her steady. Young gells is best married."

"And young men?" Jane asked.

"Let 'em keep single as long as they can," said Mrs. Doveton, "for a young man married is a young man marred."

"It would be a queer world if Mrs. Doveton had the arranging of it," said Lucilla as the door closed behind the anxious mother. "Come on, let's go and tell Gladys not to."

Gladys was in the shop; she was in the shop almost all the time now. Jane and Lucilla felt their hands to be full with the much more pleasant duty of entertaining their agreeable and punctually-paying guests.

"Look here, Gladys," said Jane, sitting down between a sieve of apples and a pile of giant marrows, for it was now August, and the shop looked like a Harvest Thanksgiving, "what have you been doing to Herbert Doveton?"

"I ain't done nothing to him."