Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/87

88 and neck, and even to her very ears. However, if you are a little lame it is an excuse for stooping, and she kept her face turned downwards.

Mr. Simmons and the bath-chair reappeared almost at once, and the garden house was locked up, its Persian shutters adjusted and padlocked and the iron gates secured, Mr. Simmons and his "boss" made an appointment for another meeting, and it was John Rochester who wheeled the bath-chair to Hope Cottage, at whose gate Lucilla said:

"What about another tea At least, have you had yours?"

Mr. Rochester hadn't. So he came in, and there was tea, and old china, and Queen Anne spoons, and thin bread-and-butter—but everything was stiff and lacking in charm.

"There had been too much forgiving, and too lately, for any of us to be really comfortable," said Jane when he had gone. "What on earth made you ask the man in, Lucy?"

"I thought you'd like me to," said Lucilla, with quite monumental tactlessness.

"You never made a greater mistake," said Jane; "my one wish was to be rid of him and try not to remember the perfectly awful things I said to him when he first turned up."

"What did you say?" Lucilla asked, with a perhaps justifiable curiosity.

"I quite forget," said Jane briskly. "However, I'm glad it's all straightened out. I hate muddles." She stretched herself luxuriously on the narrow Empire couch. "What a day it's been! The best day of my life, Lucy!"

"It has been nice," said Lucilla, still thickly entangled in an unwonted tactlessness; "it is nice to have things straightened out with nice people."

"Oh—that!" said Jane slightingly. "I meant because we'd made so much money! Look here, Luce, you fetch the papier-mâché tray out of the dining-room—the one with the mother-of-pearl roses on it—and we'll pour out all the money on it, and count it, and gloat over it; and then we'll