Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/5

6 trample on us. She's given us the run of the baronial halls, and the stately ball-room, and the bed where Queen Elizabeth slept, and the library that came over with the Conqueror. We grub about and we find this, and because this isn't the first library I've been in I happen to be able to read it." She thumped the book on her lap. "Don't tell me it's not Fate. Fate arranged it all. Fate meant me to try the spell. And I mean to. And as for not daring—pooh, my darling Emmeline, pooh! . . . Likewise pshaw!" she added pensively.

Emmeline smiled with calm indulgence. She was stout, squarely-made, plain-faced, kind-eyed, with a long, thick, mouse-coloured pigtail and small, white, well-kept hands. She began to pick up her books one by one and to put them back in their proper places on the shelves.

"It's all very well to say 'pooh!'" she said.

"'And pshaw!'" the not-to-be-dared interpolated. "My Aunt Emmeline tried it. A spell—and I expect it was that very one; at least, she set out to try it, but she lost her way in the wood. The night was very dark, and she gave it up, and came back, and when she got to the garden gate she couldn't open it and couldn't find the handle. And then the moon came out, and she found it was the door of the mausoleum in the park she was trying to get in at."

"Shut up!" said the girl on the top of the steps, a long-legged, long-armed, long-nosed, long-chinned girl rather like a well-bred filly. "Jane, do say you won't do it. Not after that, will you?"

"It's a perfectly horrid story," said Jane, unmoved, "but you can't frighten me in that way, Emmeline. However, it decides me to have lights. Those fairy lights and Chinese lanterns you had for what you called the 'little' dance—I suppose they're somewhere about. Do you know where, exactly?" She urged the question with a firm hand-grasp.

"Don't pinch," said Emmeline, disengaging her ankle. "You can have the lights. But we shouldn't be allowed to do it."