you to call! My aunts will be so sorry to have missed you. They have gone to the cricket match. It is Dissipation Week, you know. We all have headaches afterwards."
It was all said in the handshake, and, trivial as the words were, Lucia had thought them carefully over as she came downstairs. Indeed, it was partly by virtue of their triviality that they were so admirable; but they were friendly and cordial, and by their very lightness admitted him to her private humorous view of the dissipations. Furthermore, the art was concealed; they appeared quite natural, and yet they thawed the ice of what she expected him to believe was their first meeting, for she made not the very slightest claim on him to remember that they had met before. She was not even sure that she wished Mm to remember it.
"This is my first stroke of good fortune this afternoon," he said. "I have paid a dozen calls, but everybody is out."
Lucia, for an infinitesimal part of a second, considered whether she should follow this up, and ask him if he was sure he considered it good fortune. But her common sense instantly rejected such a thing. It would not be exactly fishing for a complimentary speech, but it would be alluding to fishing-rods. Instead, with far greater tact, she answered more simply.
"Yes; all the world is broiling in tents at the cricket," she said. "I have broiled for the last three days, but to-day I said the dissipation-headaches had begun. It wasn't true, by the way, but it was lying with a moral purpose."
"And what was the moral purpose?" he asked.
"I wanted to practise," she said, looking across to the piano, "and I wanted to read a book. You will have a cup of tea, will you not? Do let us drink it in the garden, where there is a little shade."
The complete naturalness of her manner made it not even occur to him whether Brixham etiquette allowed him to drink tea alone with this girl. Besides, he could hardly have done otherwise; she had come down to see him when he called, apparently without the slightest hesitation, whereas if the tête-à-tête had been irregular she would, of course, have said she was not in. Even before he replied, too, she had rung the bell—whether he meant to have tea or not, it was clear that she did. Her manner was merely simple and friendly. It was impossible not to return a similar currency.
"The practising concerned Schubert," he said. "I hope the book was on the same level."
