Page:The Lark - E Nesbit, 1922.djvu/95

96 it'll be time to think about playing at Romeo and Juliet and all that. We're business girls—and I hope your young man will see that we are."

"He's not my young man," Lucilla retorted placidly; "and the poor dear hasn't shown the faintest sign of Romeoishness, anyhow."

"He'd better not," said Jane fiercely.

"What would you do?" Lucilla asked, her pretty eye shining with a mild curiosity above her fourth banana.

"He'd soon see what I'd do," Jane retorted. "But there—perhaps I do but wrong the lad. I daresay it's only in books that a young man can never do a friendly act for a young woman without its meaning some silly nonsense or Other. Perhaps really young men are just as sensible and reasonable as girls are."

"I shouldn't wonder," said Lucilla. "You see, we know very little about them except from books. And in books they have to be loverish, and so do the girls, because they're all heroes and heroines, of course. But I've sometimes thought that real life is most likely quite different from books."

"You bet it is," said Jane—"from some books, anyway, Don't look so pleading, Luce—I'll promise not to bite his head off if he behaves like a real person. But business girls have to be on their guard against behaving like heroines or allowing other people to behave like heroes. Let's get to bed. I'm dog-tired and there's no more cocoa."

"No more there is," said Lucilla, looking into the jug with one eye. "Come on then."

And they went.

Business was very slack on Monday, and still slack, though brightening, on Tuesday. There were not very many flowers in the garden, and cutting and arranging these occupied but a small part of the day. The girls read and talked and sewed and wrote letters during the long intervals between customers. And the gas-green walls, which on Saturday had made a tolerable background for the masses of "flowers and the brisk