Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/259

260 nieces would help? The stuff could be found— it wouldn't cost them anything but time. Miss Lucas was sure they would, and they did.

"But how terrible that they should need charity," said Miss Lucas, clicking the eternal knitting-needles.

"Yes," said Miss Antrobus. "But it's no use our arguing about that. What we've got to do is to see that a few of the little Toms and Sallies are just the least bit more comfortable than they would be without us. That's all we can do just now.

And this they did.

Miss Lucas only lasted three weeks. Lucilla could not endure her any longer. Miss Antrobus's kind attentions and her amiable enquiries became more and more intolerable, and at last Lucilla flatly refused to go on with the business.

"If Miss Antrobus can't do without a chaperone," she said, "she must go and look for one somewhere else. Surely Mrs. Thornton is chaperone enough for anything? Besides, what does a girl want with chaperones when she's been a Waac or a V.A.D., or whatever it was that Miss Antrobus was? I could stand it if she wasn't so hatefully civil to the old lady."

"Mr, Tombs is civil too."

"So's everybody if it comes to that. But Mr. Tombs is civil like Sir Walter Raleigh laying down his cloak for an aged queen to walk on. Miss Antrobus . . . well, I think there's such a thing as being too civil by half. Where is she now?"

"Gardening. Mr. Dix says she's a very promising gardener."

"It seems to me that she's a very competent person. She can cook—she told me so. I mean she told Aunt Harriet so. And she understands sick-nursing, and making clothes, and now gardening. She says the more things you can do the more interesting life is."

"I've often said that myself," said Jane, yawning.

"Ah," said Lucilla, "but she does them. And you've got to do what I say. Let Aunt Harriet vanish decently or I shall give the whole show away. I know I shall."