Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/57

58 slowly, though she did not mean to go more slowly, down the wide, shallow steps of the front staircase.

"The first door to the left," she kept saying to herself, "The first door to the left."

And so reached the lowest step, turned to the left, felt for the door and pushed it open. And, even as she did so, something leaped at her. Before she knew whether she was assailed by the claws of a wild beast, or merely by the iron arm of the law, she found her two wrists clasped. By hands, not by fangs, she noted, after she had sent that one wild scream echoing through the house.

She felt her left wrist transferred to the same strong fingers that held her right, and a low voice said: "Don't scream—it's no use. Come along," and she was being urged, quite gently, towards the front door.

With his free right hand her captor opened the door, and the bright spring sunshine struck at her eyes, blindingly. She closed them—and before she could open them again she felt that her wrists were released. She opened her eyes and found herself on the moss-greened door-step, leaning against the heavy doorpost, trembling, shivering, decontrolled, and facing her, very deeply and obviously discountenanced, a young man—a handsome young man—the very exactly and beyond any doubt same young man who had thrust himself among the remnants of their arbour breakfast to ask the way to Leabridge.

"Well," he said slowly, "I'm . . ."

"I know you are," said Lucilla breathlessly. "Of course you would be, but we're not burglars. We're just . . . well, you remember we had breakfast at the Rose and Crown?"

"Yes," said he, and as she seemed to advance, so he seemed to accept, this certificate of respectability.

"But why? . . ." he asked. "How? . . . Are you," he added, breathing more freely in the clear air of a sudden enlightenment, "a party with an order to view?"

Lucilla hesitated. "No," she said, "how could we,