Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/94

Rh come out for. I'm stuck at my uncle's place till he gets back from Madrid. I'm trying to invent a thing that's never been invented before—a much more difficult job than you'd think—and I've absolutely no one to talk to and nowhere to go. If you wouldn't mind my looking round now and then to see if I can lend a hand in anything? Please don't thank me—the thanks will be all the other way if you'll let me.

So it was understood that they gratefully would let him. And he saw them and their bag of money to their own door.

"How nice he was this evening," said Lucilla, as the two friends sat over their cocoa and bananas and bread-and-butter. They took it in turns to keep house. This was Lucilla's week, and this was an economical day. "So much nicer than the first time."

"He's not bad," Jane admitted.

"He's awfully nice," said Lucilla. "I do think"

"Don't say you think he has such a kind face," said Jane quickly, "because I won't bear it. He's all right, and quite nice and friendly and all that. And I hope he'll keep so. We've got our livings to make, and we don't want young men hanging round, paying attentions and addresses and sighing and dying and upsetting everything. If he likes to be a good chum I don't mind, but the minute I see any signs of philandering, the least flicker of a sheep's eye, we'll drop Mr. Rochester, if you don't mind."

"Well," said Lucilla with firmness, taking a third banana, "I do think you're horrid. Can't a young man be civil to us but you must begin to think things? Why can't you let things be? It would be time enough to talk like that if he'd shown the faintest signs of anything of the sort. Girls oughtn't always to be on the look-out for addresses and attentions and so on."

"Yes, they ought," Jane insisted; "just as you ought to be always on the lookout for snakes in the grass—I mean if you live in snaky sort of countries. We've—got to—earn—our—living. And when we've done that