Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/39

40 she had seen him. He did not recognise her now that she wore a straw hat and the charm of nineteen instead of a crown and fifteen's wild woodland grace. And she did not recognise the face that had come in answer to her invocation, because four years in the Red Sea set their mark upon a man, even without that scar that he got when his ship was torpedoed. They have not recognised each other, but they are in the same county; more, they are in the same district: she anchored to a house called Hope Cottage, he less closely attached, but still attached, to a resident uncle. If there is anything in these old charms the two will meet again quite soon. If there isn't anything—well, still they will probably meet. Of course he may fall in love with Lucilla—it was she who spoke to him. If he does, we shall know that charms on St. John's Eve are worse than useless.

Anyhow, he is now definitely out of the picture, which concerns itself only with the desperate efforts of two inexperienced girls to establish, on the spur of the moment, a going concern that shall be at once agreeable and remunerative.

They talked it over. The forethought of the defaulting guardian in providing an intelligent, drab-haired woman to come in and do for them left them free to talk. And talk they did. Presently talk crystallised into little lists of possibilities. As thus:

Be milliners. Be dressmakers. Market-gardening. Keeping rabbits ("We've got one to begin with, anyhow," said Lucilla). Keeping fowls. Taking paying guests. Writing novels. Going out as governesses ("Not if I know it," said Jane. "Think of "). Selling the house and furniture and going to Canada ("Too cold," said Lucilla. "Besides, they have no old buildings," said Jane, "Your mind would be cold there as well as your body"). Wood-carving, Going about as strolling minstrels.

It was not an unhappy time. Freedom was theirs. They might be unlucky, but there was no one to tell them whose fault it was. The house, though small, was very