Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/50

Rh blowing in their eyes. Why wouldn't they buy it? Lucky to get it, I say."

"But we can't live on what we make out of the marmalade, and there aren't half enough flowers," Lucilla would say. And Jane would say:

"Oh, if we only could have the House! I say—let's go and look at it."

And then they would go and look and look and long and love it through its iron railings, and desire passionately the right to gather and sell the flowers that budded and bloomed and withered before their eyes out of reach—out of reach.

"If we were born fortunate," said Lucilla, "we should catch the charlady here on one of her cleaning days, and bribe her, and then . . ."

"We are born fortunate," Jane insisted. "That's what you don't seem to see. We are. Our star would make Napoleon's look small. When did two girls of our age have such a chance as we've got—to have a lark entirely on our own? No chaperon, no rules, no . . ."

"No present income or future prospects," said Lucilla.

"No slavery!" cried Jane.

Every day they went down to the House. And ("We were born fortunate, I told you so!" whispered Jane) at last came the day when a change in lines and angles smote their eyes. One of the big gates was ajar. Going down the road was a retreating figure, stout, charlady like, bearing a basket and a jug.

"We can get into the garden," breathed Lucilla, and on the tip-toes of conspirators, with the haste of hunted rabbits, they stole through the iron gates and up the weedy drive.

"We can get into the house." said Jane, catching Lucilla's hand. And indeed, beyond the wide, moss-green semi-circle of the front door steps the front door showed two dark inches beyond itself.

Jane ran up the steps and pushed the heavy, sombre Georgian door, which swung back, revealing a dark hall—marble-floored. Tall portraits loomed from the walls.