Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/64

Rh "Well," he said, as he turned to lock the big dark door. "Well—I really am! Completely and without any nonsense about it, I am!"

The parlour was made very pretty with flowers. ("Not too many," Lucy; "we don't want to look like the florists we are. Keep out the professional touch if you can," said Jane.) And Jane, her foot hardly hurting at all, lay on the narrow Empire sofa, covered with the Paisley shawl that Lucilla had most opportunely found that very day in a previously unexplored hair-trunk in the attic.

"And there are all sorts of other things there too," she told her friend: "silk gowns and scarves, and fans and parasols—but I wouldn't really explore till you could too. I just took the shawl. It was on the top—it seemed like the hand of Providence. And there were satin shoes and lace petticoats, and satin ones. They'd be gorgeous, those things, for dressing up or charades. And another thing: we can cut them up and make dresses for ourselves. That's the best of those old dresses six yards round." "You seem very jolly to-day," said Jane, almost morosely, from her nest of Paisley and holland-coloured silk—tussore they call it, I believe.

"Well, you see, our first tea-party is just going to happen. And you . . ."

"Don't tell me to mark your words," said Jane, "because I can't bear it."

"I won't," said Lucilla, stopping short in her final touches to the already almost over-arranged room. "I'll say something quite different. Where did you see him before?"

"What?" said Jane, sitting bolt upright.

"Well, you have seen him before, haven't you?"

"Who?" said Jane uselessly.

"Him. The man that you won't let me tell you to mark my words about. You have seen him before, haven't you?"

"I don't think so. . . . I . . . I really don't exactly know. No . . . of course I haven't."