Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/88

Rh make three lovely satin bags to keep it in—one for copper and one for silver and one for gold."

"You mean notes," said Lucilla, and went to fetch the tray.

Meanwhile Mr. John Rochester went on his tray with a good deal to think about. He felt, emotionally, rather battered: forgiving and being forgiven is exhausting work. Also he had to write to his mother—not the ordinary duty-letter, all affection and petites nouvelles, but a serious answer, too long delayed, to a serious letter of hers.

When he reached the small brick-built house where every room save those where folk slept was covered from ceiling to floor with bookshelves and pigeon-holes, he sat down at a large littered writing-table and pulled out a letter, it was a long one, several sheets of pale blue linenish-looking paper. Among many words he read:

"Your dear father once told me that he had never been in love in his life. Of course he told me differently when he proposed, or I should never have accepted him. But I am sure what he said later was true. You are so like him, dear Jack, in face and voice and everything, I think, as I have so often told you, that you are very likely like him in this too. But it is quite possible to be happily married without being what is called in love. You are twenty-eight, dear, and if you had been the sort of boy who falls in love you would have done it before now, don't you think? It's no use waiting for what will most likely never happen. I assure you, if one of the two parties loved the other, marriage is quite easy and pleasant. And your whole future depends on your having money to pursue your experiments and inventions and things. Now, dearest, do let me warn you not to build any hopes on your great-uncle James. He let your father think he was going to do something for him, and then he never did. He is very eccentric, and you never know. He is always running about—now to Italy, now to