Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/92

Rh "I think it's the garden distracts us," said Jane, looking towards the open window, beyond which lay lawn and cedars bathed in moonlight and soft spring air.

"Let's shut the shutters or else take everything home," Lucilla suggested. "It's awfully late, and I'm very, very hungry."

"Nonsense—stick to it! Not a bite or sup do you get till our figures agree. Oh, I say— we spent ninepence on chocs.—that came out of the shop money. And that gipsy who had the wallflowers, she didn't pay, you remember—that makes a difference of twopence. And did you put down the half-crown we paid the man who swept up the path and tied back the creeper?"

And so the maddening work of the amateur accountants began all over again,

"They ought to have taught us all about this at school," said Lucilla; "there's something called 'striking a balance'"

"I shouldn't mind—I feel quite violent enough. I'd strike it fast enough if I could find it. It means when everything adds up to the same as everything else, I think," Jane added instructively. "Don't giggle, Lucilla, it wasn't really funny. You're faint and hysterical from want of food. Look here—this looks more like it."

It did, much more like it—so much so that a mere difference of ninepence-halfpenny might have been allowed to assume the disguise of "sundries" so useful in these emergencies. But then Lucilla suddenly remembered that she had put a Bradbury in the first volume of Browning for safety. That made the balance wobble again horribly, and go down on the other side with a surplus of nineteen and twopence-halfpenny.

"Oh, stop it!" said Lucilla, pushing her hands through her hair. "Let's get home, and do it after supper. Our brains are reeling with famine. Don't you know when you're hungry all your blood rushes to your stomach and your brain's left high and dry? At least, I think that's it. What's that?"