Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/43

44 houses with bigger gardens than ours. People might want exchange."

"You think we might advertise: 'People who don't want to be bothered with large gardens can have small one in exchange'? It's our only chance. We can never do anything with Hope Cottage except live in it—and that we can't do on the interest of your five hundred pounds—or else let it. Now, if we let it furnished, we could partly live somewhere else on the money."

"I don't want to 'partly' live anywhere," said Jane, "I wish to warm both hands before the fire of life."

"Well, you'll never warm them here," said Lucilla.

"The worst of it is that you're so often right," said Jane, tying the money up in a clean blue-checked duster and hiding it in the plate-warmer, "No burglar will ever think of looking for it there. Now let's go out and look for a house."

When they had locked the front door behind them Lucilla stood on the step surveying the front garden.

"What's-his-name and the ruins of Carthage," said Jane, flippant, but a little uneasy too,

Lucilla walked to the corner of the house and looked round it.

"Why," she said, "there's not a flower in sight!"

"Fifteen and eightpence," said Jane—"I mean ninepence, and a good deal of that was ivy."

"I shouldn't put up the board here," said Lucilla, "it's hardly worth while."

"If we can't get another house I shall plant flowers here."

"Flowers take time to grow."

"Annuals don't—at least, not much. Let's go and buy a gardening book and find a house."

They did not find a house, but they bought a gardening book—and spent the evening over it. In the kitchen. You tend to sit in the kitchen when it is very light and clean bright with gay-coloured crockery and sparkling with silvery tinsmith's work; and when you have it to yourselves; and