"You wouldn't enjoy it, Lucy, you
really wouldn't. The world is simply wasted on any woman under five
and thirty." Lucia was not quite five and twenty. She was not very
strong, and she felt that if she didn't see the world soon she might
not enjoy it very much when she did see it. And it was barely a month
now till the twenty-seventh.
Lucia went singing downstairs and into the library to throw all its
four windows open to the delicious spring, and there, to her amazement
(for it was Sunday), she came upon Mr. Rickman cataloguing hard.
She felt a little pang of self-reproach at the sight of him. There was
something pathetic in his attitude, in his bowed head and spread
elbows, the whole assiduous and devoted figure. How hard he was
working, with what a surprising speed in his slender nervous hands.
She had not meant him to give up the whole of his three days' holiday
to her, and she really could not take his Easter Sunday, poor little
man. So, with that courtesy which was Mr. Rickman's admiration and
despair, she insisted on restoring it to him, and earnestly advised
his spending it in the open air. In the evening he could have the
library to himself, to read or write or rest in; he would, she
thought, be more comfortable there than in the inn. Mr. Rickman
admitted that he would like to have a walk to stretch his legs a bit,
and as she opened the south window she had a back view of him
stretching them across the lawn.
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