Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/38

Rh "We'd better go," said Jane. "Whatever did you want to snub him so for?"

"He didn't really want to know about Leabridge. He just wanted to talk to us."

"I should think he did! After four years of the Red Sea anybody would want to talk to anybody. But that wasn't it. Don't you see, he came into the garden just when I was saying I was going to tell you something. He had to let us know he was there. I think it was very, very nice of him. Now, Lucy, you must bow as we go by."

"We won't go by," said Lucilla; "we'll go round the other way, and turn our backs on him at once."

They did. And it was rather a pity, because if the young man had seen more of Jane than a large hat and a chin, and if Jane had seen the young man distinctly, either or both might have been moved to oppose Lucilla's severe and severing tactics. I don't quite see what either could have done—but I incline to think that the situation would have been changed.

As it was, Jane and Lucilla paid their bill and John Rochester was left to drink gingerbeer in the sun and wonder why he couldn't be allowed to talk for half an hour to two ladies just because no one had mumbled their names to him and his to them. He was thirsty for the companionship of women—any decent women. So that presently he carried his glass into the bar and tried to talk to the barmaid; he found a nice, respectable woman with very little conversation. Then he rode on to lunch with a wealthy uncle who had expressed a wish to see him. Later he would go down to his mother's. He had not seen her yet. The uncle had been imperative. He wondered whether Miss Antrobus was married, and then he thought of the gold-crowned child in the mmoonlit wood, and wondered. . ..

Little did he think—as our good old standard authors would say. . . But volumes could be ineffectually filled by the recital of what Mr. Rochester didn't think. The point for us is that he had seen the child again, and that