Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/258

Rh like a child who in the midst of make-believe is reminded of some real and treasured possession.

"Oh, him!" she said slowly.

"Well, if you care anything about him you'd better be careful. Suppose he found out about the others?"

"Oh, you don't understand, miss. I tell him about all the others, every one of them, and what they say and all."

"And doesn't he mind?"

A look of elfish cunning puckered the face of Gladys.

"He don't believe me, miss! He thinks I make it all up to amuse him like. So that's all right. Only if he did find anything out he couldn't never say I hadn't told him, see? So I'm all right whatever happens."

"Well; spare Herbert, anyhow," said Jane, and she and Lucilla escaped to the garden, the final words of Gladys pursuing them: "I'll spare him by the very next post, miss, you may depend."

Looking back afterwards, it always seemed to Lucilla and Jane that that autumn was the merriest time of their lives. Money was coming in plentifully, both from the house and from the garden, whose resources Mr. Dix was exploiting in a way that seemed to them simply masterly. The balance at the bank was rising like a tide, and the relations between the right and the left hand of the bank-book grew more and more such as we all wish to see. Life was simple and satisfying. Nor was it by pleasure only that it was so entirely filled. There was work. The shop a little; accounts a little j and a good deal of cutting-out and making of clothes—their own and not their own. Miss Antrobus had interests outside Cedar Court. She never spoke of them to Jane or Lucilla, but she poured them into the ear of Miss Lucas in that after-dinner hour which was Lucilla's torture and Jane's remorse. She told of children whose fathers had fallen in France and who now, in the land that was to be a land fit for heroes, lacked food and clothes and everything that makes life comfortable. Did Miss Lucas think her