Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/41

42 "I was first, miss."

"Me next." "How much?"

"How much ought I to say?" Jane lowered her voice to ask her first friend, who had pinned her gift to his button-hole.

"Twopence a bit," he answered.

Jane broke off her cherry-coloured blossom into sprays and handed them over the railings, receiving many pennies in return.

"You ought to sell bokays, miss," said one of the men. "Lots of the chaps would like to take home a bunch to the missus of a Saturday. You put up a board and say, 'Flowers for sale here.' Not but what it would be a pity to rob the garden."

"Oh, but we want to sell the flowers," said Jane. "Thank you so much. I'll get a board ready."

"I'll bring you along a bit o' board," said the man with the carpenter's bag, "all ready painted white—and you can do the letters on it yourself with Brunswick black. All saves expense."

When the little crowd had dispersed, Jane was left rather breathless, with blackened hands and apron-pockets weighed down with what the police call bronze.

She heaved it all out onto the kitchen-table, where Lucilla sat busy as usual with pencil and paper. The coins rattled and rang and spun on the smooth scrubbed deal; a couple of adventurous sixpences and a rollicking halfpenny escaped to the floor, and at least three pence rolled under the dresser.

"What on earth's all this?" Lucilla asked, as well she might.

"Your destiny, my destiny," Jane told her. "It's the finger of Fate. Drop those everlasting lists. Away with them! We're in trade!"

"But where did you get all this money?" Lucilla asked, beginning to arrange the pennies in piles of twelve.

"In the garden," said Jane dramatically; "buried