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Carbonel: The King Of Cats. Kingdom Of Carbonel. Carbonel And Calidor

1. CARBONEL: THE KING OF CATS

1

Breaking-up

Rosemary’s satchel bounced cheerfully up and down on her back as she hopped on and off the pavement of Tottenham Grove. She enjoyed school, except for arithmetic and boiled fish on Fridays. But breaking-up, as you will have noticed, even if you have not particularly distinguished yourself, gives everyonea delightful party feeling, particularly at the end of the Summer Term. Rosemary Brown was fizzing with it as she bounced up and down on the kerb.

She had just reached the pillar box at the corner when Mary Winters came by with her friend Arlene.

‘Hallo, Rosie!’ said Mary. ‘We’re going to Blackpool tomorrow!’

‘Blackpool is common, my auntie says. We’re going to Bournemouth.’ Arlene wore brooches, and sometimes a gold bracelet to go to school, although it was not allowed. Her auntie thought a great many things were common. ‘Where are you going, Rosie?’

Rosemary hopped off the kerb, changed feet, and hopped on again with great deliberation.

‘Nowhere!’ she said as carelessly as she could manage.

‘Poor thing!’ said Arlene with maddening pity, and the two friends hurried off, giggling, together.

Rosemary went on doggedly hopping, but the party feeling was only fizzing at half-cock now. Mary and Arlene knew quite well that she was unlikely to be going away. It was hard enough for her mother to manage at all, because she had no money but her widow’s pension, and what she earned by sewing for people. Rosemary stopped hopping. Her satchel was beginning to hurt when she bounced. It was heavy because it was full of end of term things, a rather squashy piece of clay modelling, her indoor shoes and a dirty overall, as well as some books. She ran the rest of the way down Tottenham Grove with her short pigtails flapping up and down sideways, like the blades of an old pair of scissors.

Rosemary and her mother lived at number ten, in three furnished rooms on the top floor, with use of bath on Tuesdays and Fridays, and a share of the kitchen. It was not a very pleasant arrangement, because the furniture was ugly (most of it was covered with horsehair that pricked, even through a winter tunic), and the bathroom was always festooned with other people’s washing. But it was cheap, and would have to do until they could find somewhere unfurnished, and then they would be able to use their own comfortable, shabby belongings again.

The houses in Tottenham Grove were all exactly alike, very tall and thin, with a great deal of peeling paint and cracking plaster. Once they had been rather grand, with servants in the basement, and carriages driving up to the front doors, and ladies with very large hats and very small waists paying calls. Her mother had told her all about it. But Rosie was not bothering her head about that at the moment. She knew without looking which was number ten, and went running up the twelve steps so quickly that she bumped into Mrs Walker, the landlady, who was slapping the door mat against one of the pillars of the peeling portico.

‘I’m so sorry, Mrs Walker!’ said Rosemary breathlessly.

‘I should think so!’ said Mrs Walker sourly. ‘Home for the holidays? How long is it this time?’

‘Six weeks,’ said Rosie.

‘Well, I don’t know! Six weeks! I should have thought a great girl like you could have been doing something useful.’

She flopped the still dusty mat into its place, and Rosie went slowly upstairs with her satchel bumping on each step as it trailed behind her. When she opened the door of the sitting room she saw that the table was drawn up to the window and already laid.

‘Mummy, what a lovely dinner!’

‘Well, it’s the first day of the holidays,’ said her mother cheerfully, ‘and I’ve just got three weeks’ work from Mrs Pendlebury Parker, so I thought we would celebrate.’

There was a bunch of marigolds in the centre of the blue and white table cloth, a constellation of small, glowing suns. There were crescent rolls, tinned tongue and salad, and a bottle of bright pink fizzy stuff for Rosemary.

‘There is ice-cream with stewed fruit afterwards,’ said her mother, ‘but hang up your things and wash first.’

‘Tell me about Mrs Pendlebury Parker!’ said Rosemary when her knife and fork began to move a little more slowly. ‘Is it nice sort of sewing, and can you bring it home with you?’

Stories of Mrs Pendlebury Parker and the splendours of Tussocks, her house which was just outside the town, were always a source of wonder to Rosemary.

‘I’m afraid I shall have to go there every day for the next three weeks,’ said her mother. ‘I’m so sorry to have to leave you for so long on your own, Poppet, but she does pay so well, I felt I could not afford to say no. I’m afraid it is largely mending linen, so I can’t bring the work home.’

Rosie let the blob of ice-cream on her tongue melt completely before she answered, and then she said as cheerfully as she could,‘I shan’t mind really, I expect. How hateful for you to be sides-to-middling sheets, when you ought to be making beautiful dresses!’

Mrs Brown smiled.‘Never mind, darling. Think of all the things I shall have to tell you when I come home in the evenings!’

‘And perhaps,’ said Rosemary, brightening, ‘you’ll be rich enough afterwards to buy one of those things for making your sewing machine go by electricity, and then you’ll earn so much more money that we shall be able to go and live somewhere else, where your ladies will come to you, instead of you having to go to their houses whatever the weather is like. And I shall dress in black satin and say, “This way, Modom!”’ Her mother laughed.

‘And I shall be able to say, “Mrs Pendlebury Parker,” I shall say, “No, I’m afraid I cannot make you twelve flannel nightdresses by the day after tomorrow. I never sew anything coarser than cr?pe de chine!”’ They both laughed a great deal, and the meal ended quite cheerfully.

When they had finished, Mrs Brown had to go into the town to match some silks, so Rosemary cleared away and washed up the dinner plates. Next she put away her school things and changed into a cotton frock, and all the time she was wondering what she could do with herself for the next three weeks. Could she really do something useful, she wondered, as Mrs Walker had suggested? It had been rather unfair to call her a‘great girl’, because she was rather small for her ten years. All the same, it would be wonderful, she thought, to earn some money without her mother knowing anything about it, and at the end of the holidays carelessly to pour a shower of clinking coins into her astonished lap!

‘The trouble is, I don’t know what I could do,’ she said to herself. ‘I can’t sew well enough. The only thing I can do is to keep our rooms clean and tidy. I always do that in the holidays when Mummy is busy. Ican sweep and polish and wash-up.’

She rather liked the idea, and by the time she had done up the difficult button at the back of her cotton frock Rosemary had made up her mind. She would go out daily and clean.

Now she had a hazy idea that it would be necessary to take her tools with her, in the same way that her mother took her own thimble, needles, and scissors when she went out to sew. Dusters and a scrubbing brush would be easy, but Mrs Walker would not let her past the front door with a broom without going into a long explanation, and then it would no longer be a surprise.

‘Well, there is nothing for it,’ she said to herself, ‘I shall have to buy one for myself.’

After much rattling and poking with a dinner knife her money-box produced two and fivepence three farthings.

‘P’r’aps if I went to Fairfax Market I could find a cheap broom,’ she thought doubtfully. ‘It’s rather a long way, but I think I could get there and back before tea time.’

2

Fairfax Market

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Rosemary put the money in her pocket and left a note for her mother; then she started off for Fairfax Market. This was held in the old part of the town in the cobbled market square. Because she imagined that two and fivepence three farthings was not very much money with which to buy a broom, she decided not to waste any of it on a bus.

She started resolutely off, only stopping occasionally to look in a shop window. But it was hot and dusty going. The pavements seemed to toast the soles of her feet through the rubber soles of her sandals. To make matters worse, one of the buckles came off. By the time she reached the market a slight drizzle was falling, and the clock on the Market Hall roof was striking four. Instead of the cheerful racket of people shouting their wares, of laughter and bustle, the stallholders were already packing up. Rosemary went up to a stout woman who was stacking crockery which had been displayed on the cobbles.

‘Please,’ she said anxiously, ‘will you tell me where I can buy a broom?’

‘You can’t,’ snapped the fat woman without looking up. ‘Not now you can’t.’ Then she straightened herself with a grunt and looked at Rosemary’s disappointed face.

‘Never ask a favour of a fat woman when she’s bending,’ she said more kindly. ‘Leastways, not if you want a civil answer. Don’t they teach you that at school?’

Rosie shook her head, and the fat woman went on,‘The market’s been closing at four on Mondays these last three ’undred years, leastways, so my old father told me. Never mind, cheer up, lovey! ’Ave a fancy milk jug for your ma instead?’

Rosemary shook her head again and went sadly on between the rows of dismantled stalls and piles of goods hidden under tarpaulins, already glistening with rain. The money in her hand was hot and sticky, but there was nothing to buy with it, let alone a broom, so she put it back in her pocket. She inquired again of a young man who was loading bales of brightly coloured material into an ancient car.

‘Please, do you know where I can buy a broom?’

But all he said was‘’Op it, see!’ So Rosemary ’opped it.

She wandered on among the drifting straw and bits of paper till she came to the end of the market, where the pavement began again. Here she found a little shop that sold newspapers and sweets and odds and ends, so she stopped to look in the window. She wondered whether to buy a toffee-apple or a liquorice bootlace to sustain her on the way home. The toffee-apple would last longer, but on the other hand she could eat a bit of the bootlace and use the rest as a skipping rope and still eat it later. She had just decided on the apple, because you cannot skip comfortably with a buckle off your sandal, when she felt something damp and furry rubbing against her bare legs. She looked down, and saw a huge black cat. Now Rosemary liked cats. If only Mrs Walker had allowed it she would certainly have had one of her own, so she bent down to stroke him. But the cat ran off and then sat down a few yards away and looked at her. Rosemary followed and tried to stroke him again, but the creature darted off for a few feet as before, and sat down to wash its paws. Rosemary laughed.

‘I believe you want me to follow you! All right, I will. I’m coming!’ So they went off in fits and starts, with Rosemary trying to catch the cat, who lolloped away as soon as she was within stroking distance. But although the cat did not laugh as she did, it was perfectly obvious that he was enjoying the joke as much as she was. She was just going to make a successful grab at him when she bumped into someone. It was an old woman.

‘I’m so sorry!’ said Rosemary.

‘And so you should be,’ said the old woman sharply, ‘keeping me waiting like this. Well, it’s yours for two and fivepence, and it’s cheap at the price.’

‘What is?’ asked Rosemary in a puzzled way.

‘The broom, of course! That’s what you’ve come for, isn’t it? If that cat is trying to fool me just because I’m going out of business…’

The cat was patting a drifting piece of orange paper with deep concentration.

‘Oh, but I do want a broom!’ said Rosemary eagerly.

‘I’ve sold my stock and bought myself a new hat,’ went on the old woman unexpectedly. ‘How do you like it?’

Rosemary hoped she would not be asked to give an opinion about any of the rest of the old woman’s clothes. The hat was certainly very fashionable. It was sprinkled with sequins and had a little veil. But perched on the old woman’s wild grey hair it only served to make the hair look wilder and her ragged clothes more disreputable.

‘It’s very pretty,’ said Rosemary. ‘But shall I take off the price label? It’s hanging down behind.’

‘Oh, no you don’t!’ said the old woman fiercely. ‘I paid nineteen and elevenpence for my hat and I’m not giving away any of the trimmings! You can have the broom and the cat, too, if you like, but my trimmings aren’t in the bargain.’

Rosemary felt quite indignant at the turn the conversation was taking and she answered with some spirit.

‘Of course I don’t want the trimmings from your hat! But I wish I could have the cat.’ She looked at the handsome animal who was sitting with his tail neatly curled round his feet, apparently fast asleep.

The old woman chuckled.

‘He’s a deep one, he is!’ She paused, looked sharply at Rosemary and added, ‘He’s worth his weight in… farthings.’

‘But if the broom costs two and fivepence I’ve only got three farthings left, and he must be worth much more than that!’ Surely Mrs Walker could be talked round? Anyway, she knew that her mother would not mind. It was more than likely that the queer old woman was not a very kind mistress. Rosemary had a feeling that the cat was not really asleep, but was listening with all his ears.

‘You can have him for three farthings if that is all you’ve got,’ said the old woman.

‘I’ll have him!’ she answered breathlessly. As she said it, the cat opened his eyes, flashed one golden glance at her, and closed them again.

Rosemary pulled the money out of her pocket and put it into the not too clean hand which the old woman was already greedily holding out for it. She counted eagerly, but it was the farthings that seemed to interest her most. She held them up to her short-sighted eyes, then she bit them and chuckled.

‘I guessed as much. You’re in luck, my boy. Three queens for a prince!’

‘They are my Queen Victoria farthings. That’s why I kept them. They are all I have. Will they do?’

‘Oh, aye, they’ll do better than you know,’ replied the old woman.

The cat was not pretending to sleep now. He was wide awake and staring at Rosemary with his two great golden eyes.‘You can take him,’ she went on, and prodded him with her foot. ‘And don’t say I never did you a good turn, my boy. Though, mind you, it’s only half undone.’

The Market Hall clock struck five as she spoke.

‘It’s getting awfully late,’ said Rosemary. ‘I think I must be going. Please may I have the broom?’

‘The broom? Oh, aye, here you are.’ And so saying the old woman pushed it into Rosemary’s hand, turned and disappeared down a dark alley at the side of the sweet shop. As she went under the arch she ducked her head as if she was used to a much taller kind of hat.

Rosemary watched her go. Then she looked down at the broom, and her heart sank. It was not what she wanted at all. It was the sort of broom that gardeners use– a rough wooden handle with a bundle of twigs bound on at one end, and only a few dilapidated twigs at that.

‘What a shame!’ said Rosemary. As the full extent of her bad luck dawned on her she could not stop the hot tears from trickling down her face. The broom was useless, at least for her purpose. She had no money left to buy another, and to crown it all she would have to walk all the way home without a buckle on her shoe, with not even the consolation of a toffee-apple. However, she was a brave girl, and in the absence of a handkerchief she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and decided to make the best of it. But just at that moment, quite clearly and distinctly, the cat said:

‘It’s a better bargain than it looks, you know.’

‘Who said that?’ Rosemary could not believe her ears.

‘Me, of course!’ said the cat. ‘Oh, yes, of course I can talk. All animals can, but you can only hear me because you are holding the witch’s broom.’

Rosemary dropped it hurriedly. Then, realizing that she could not hear the cat talk without it, she picked it up again.

‘And I should treat it with respect,’ went on the animal dryly. ‘There’s not much life in the poor thing or she would not have sold it so cheap. Trust her for that! Pity you didn’t hear some of the things I said to her just now!’ he went on with satisfaction. ‘Not names; that is vulgar, but I ticked her up nicely!’ and his tail twitched at the memory.

Rosemary remembered how the queer old woman had known, without being told, exactly how much money she had.

‘But is she really a witch?’ she whispered in an awed voice.

‘Hush!’ said the cat, hurriedly looking over his shoulder. ‘Best not to use that word. She was, right up to the moment when you bought me and the broom. Now she’s retired; says she’s going to turn respectable.’ He added scornfully, ‘A fish might as well say it’s decided not to swim.You haven’t such a thing as a saucer of milk about you?’

Rosemary shook her head.‘Pity, YOU-KNOW-WHAT have their uses, SHE could always produce a saucer of milk no matter where we were, in the middle of Salisbury Plain or playing catch as catch can with the Northern Lights.’

‘That was kind of her, anyway,’ said Rosemary.

‘Not so very,’ said the cat. ‘If she was in a bad temper, which she generally was, like as not it would be sour.’

‘Well, as soon as we get home you shall have as much milk as you can drink. But I’m afraid we shall have to walk. I haven’t any money for a bus fare. Besides, I don’t know whether they let cats go on buses.’

‘Then go by broom,’ said the cat.

‘By broom?’ said Rosemary, feeling rather puzzled.

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep repeating everything,’ snapped the cat. ‘Mind you, it won’t fly very high. You couldn’t expect it, not in the state the poor old thing is in now. But it will take us there all right. Well, go on, why don’t you mount?’

‘Mount?’ said Rosemary.

‘There you go again! It is quite simple. You just stand astride it and say where you want to go. Best do it in rhyme. It is more polite, and the poor thing is sensitive now it is so old.’

‘There is not much to rhyme with ten Tottenham Grove, top floor,’ said Rosemary doubtfully.

‘Leave it to me,’ said the cat. ‘Tottenham Grove… stove… mauve… I’ve got it. Not very polished, but it will serve. Now then, mount and hold tight!’

He balanced himself delicately on the twiggy part of the broom.‘Now repeat after me!’…

Through window wide and not the door,

Ten Tottenham Grove, the topmost floor!

As Rosemary repeated it there was a faint quiver in the handle of the broom, and it rose slowly a couple of feet from the ground, wheeled sharply round, so that Rosemary nearly fell off, and went steadily on in the direction of Tottenham Grove. On it went, ignoring traffic lights, skimming zebra crossings, and leaving a train of astonished pedestrians in its wake. At first Rosemary could do nothing but shut her eyes and clutch the handle and pray that she would not fall off. But the motion was smooth and pleasant and she became aware that the cat was telling her something, so she opened her eyes.

‘I… I’m afraid I did not hear what you said.’

‘I was saying,’ said the cat, ‘that you should always point your broom in the direction in which you want to go. I knew a young witch once who was thrown.’

‘Goodness!’ said Rosemary. ‘What did she do?’

‘Nothing. There was not much she could do. It got clean away. Nasty things, runaway brooms, apart from the expense of getting a new one, and the trouble of breaking it in.’

By now Rosemary was beginning to enjoy herself. She knew that cars were not supposed to do more than thirty miles an hour when driving through a town, and as they steadily overtook everything else on the road she said to herself:‘Perhaps it doesn’t apply to witch’s brooms.’

A policeman outside the Town Hall tried to hold them up before he realized what she was riding. His astonishment when he did realize so staggered him that he quite lost his head, and the traffic jam that resulted gave Rosemary a clear road to the corner of Tottenham Grove.

When they neared number ten she had enough sense to hold on for all she was worth. The broom gathered itself together for a tremendous effort, rose steeply, swooped into her bedroom window, and collapsed exhausted on the floor. Rosemary stood up and rubbed her elbow. Then she picked up the broom again.

‘Best hide it in the wardrobe,’ said the cat.

‘Thank you, Broom!’ she whispered, and stood it in the corner behind her winter coat. She could hear her mother using the sewing machine next door.

3

Carbonel

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‘Hallo, darling!’ said Mrs Brown. ‘How late you are. I didn’t hear you come upstairs.’

‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ burst out Rosemary, ‘but Mummy, I’ve bought a cat in the Market. Please may I keep him?’

Mrs Brown rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand in the way she had when she was tired and worried.

‘A cat? Oh dear! Of course I don’t mind. But Mrs Walker isn’t very pleased with us at the moment.’

‘Because of the toffee?’ said Rosemary, rather crestfallen. ‘I’d forgotten about that. Besides, that was three weeks ago, and I never meant to let it boil over. This isn’t an ordinary cat, he talks! Don’t you, my Pussums?’

The black cat yawned disdainfully, jumped on to the window sill, and gazed abstractedly out.

‘I forgot. You can only hear him talk if you are holding the witch’s broomstick.’

Her mother was smiling in a grownup‘Bless-your-little-fancies’ way. Then she laughed.

‘He might really have been showing you that he doesn’t approve of being called Pussums. Poor creature, he is terribly thin. You had better give him that bit of fish in the meat-safe. I was going to make some fish-cakes, for supper, but we can open a tin of something instead.’

Rosemary beamed. She knew that if her mother began to take an interest in the cat she would never have the heart to turn him away– at least, not without a struggle. The cat ate the fish and drank a saucer of milk and then, purring deeply, turned his attention to his appearance. He washed his paws and whiskers very thoroughly while Rosemary, curled up on the horsehair sofa, ate the tea her mother had kept for her. There wasa mug of milk, some jam sandwiches, and a piece of Swiss roll.

‘He is really a very handsome animal,’ went on her mother. ‘You know, Mrs Pendlebury Parker never found her ginger cat again, although she offered a reward for him. It must be four months now since she lost him.’

‘The one she called Popsey Dinkums?’ asked Rosemary. She was busy unwinding her Swiss roll, a fascinating occupation which was only allowed at picnic sort of meals.

‘Mrs Parker thought the world of that animal,’ went on her mother. ‘I’ve seen it eating meals I would willingly have had for our supper. Oh dear, why does the shuttle always have to give out just a few inches from the end of the seam? I must finish this dressing-gown for Miss Withers beforeI start working for Mrs Pendlebury Parker.’

‘And that means tonight. Poor Mummy!’

Mrs Brown sighed.‘Never mind. You had better get to bed early, Rosie. You are yawning your head off! We will talk to Mrs Walker in the morning about the cat, but don’t be too hopeful, darling.’

‘I am rather tired. I expect it was all that walking this afternoon. But Mummy, can I have him to sleep in my room? I’m sure he’ll be good, won’t you, Pussums? And if he wants to go out there is always the little flat roof outside my window.’

‘Well, really,’ said her mother, ‘he might be trying to get round me!’ She bent down to stroke the cat, who was rubbing himself against her legs and purring loudly. ‘Very well, dear, he can sleep with you if you like.’

Later that evening, when she had kissed her mother good night and put on her nightdress, Rosemary fetched the broom from her wardrobe, jumped on to her bed, and patted the quilt beside her.

‘Come on, Pussums! Now we can have a long talk.’

‘Not if you call me by that revolting name. Pussums indeed! As if I were a common or garden, mousing, sit-by-the-fire cat.’

‘I’m very sorry, Pu… I mean, what shall I call you, then?’

‘You may call me Carbonel. That is my name.’

The cat had jumped up beside her and was kneading the quilt with his front paws, before settling in the hollow she had made in the bedclothes. He turned round three times and then sat neatly down with his front paws tucked under him.

‘Rosemary, you have a great deal to learn, but you have a kind heart and the right sort of hands.’

She was rubbing him under his chin and feeling the soft vibration of the beginnings of a purr. Rosemary stroked him in silence for a few minutes, and then she said:

‘If I’ve got a lot to learn, please don’t go to sleep now, but begin teaching me. What shall we do if Mrs Walker says we mayn’t keep you?’

‘That’s neither here nor there. In any case I can’t stay, at least, not very long.’

‘Can’t stay?’ said Rosemary in dismay. ‘But why? You’re mine! I bought you with my own money!’

‘For which, believe me, I shall be always grateful. But you are only fulfilling the prophecy’

‘What prophecy? Oh, do explain!’ said Rosie, bouncing with impatience so that the bed creaked. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about!’

‘I said you had a lot to learn,’ said Carbonel coolly. ‘Sit still and I will try to explain. In the first place you thought you had bought a common witch’s cat. Mind you, I’m not blaming you. A very natural mistake. You were not to know that I am a Royal Cat.’

‘Gracious!’ said Rosemary in a voice that squeaked with excitement. ‘But how did you…?’

‘Don’t interrupt,’ said Carbonel, ‘I’m telling you. I was stolen from my cradle when I was a mere kitten. There was a prophecy among my people that something like that would happen one day. SHE stole me. Always ambitious, she was, and nothing would satisfy her but a Royal Cat to run her errands and sit on her broom. Oh, she was a proud one in those days. Handsome they say she was once, too, though you wouldn’t think so now.’

‘How horrid of her to steal a kitten!’ breathed Rosemary indignantly.

‘Yes,’ said the cat, gazing out of the window with his great amber eyes, not as if he was looking at the roofs and chimneys, but as though he was seeing something quite different. ‘I was so young that my eyes were still blue, and my tail no longer than your little finger. But I knew the RoyalRules. I learnt ’em as soon as my eyes were open. I can just remember my mother, a beautiful, smoke grey Persian she was, saying to me: “My son,” she used to say, “my little son, never forget you are a Prince. Behave like one, even if you do not feel like one or look like one.” I never forgot her words, so I never lost my self respect. Many’s the time when I’ve been too hungry to sleep I’ve repeated the Rules over and over to myself, till at last I dropped off.’

‘Poor little kitten!’ said Rosemary softly.

‘But it had its moments,’ he went on. ‘I took to the broomstick business like a duck to water. Oh, those were the days, when you raced together through the tumbling sky, with the Milky Way crackling below, and the wind in your fur strong enough to tear the whiskers off you! Or leaping and plunging through the midnight sky with a host of others, and the earth twirling beneath you no bigger than a bobbin!’

He was standing now with his back arched and bristling, making strange cat noises in his throat. It was growing dusk, and his eyes glowed hotly. Rosemary waited, a little awed, till the noises in his throat subsided, and then she put out a timid hand and stroked the bristling fur. The cat started and came to himself again. She stroked him gently till the only sign of his excitement was in the twitching end of his tail.

‘But why did you not run away?’ asked Rosemary presently.

‘Because the magic was too strong for me. There was nothing for it but to wait until the prophecy was fulfilled. It went like this…

A kit among the stars shall sit

Beyond the aid of feline wit.

Empty Royal throne and mat,

Till Three Queens save a princely cat.

‘And did you sit among the stars?’ asked Rosie.

‘Of course,’ said Carbonel, ‘many a night. On Christian name terms with some of them I was… But don’t go and start me off again.’

‘I’m beginning to see!’ said Rosemary, bouncing up and down again. ‘My Queen Victoria farthings are the Three Queens, and they bought you from… from the old woman.’

‘You’d better call her Mrs Cantrip. That’s the name she goes by.’

‘And now you are free! Oh, Carbonel! How lovely. I’m so glad.’ But Carbonel did not seem to share her excitement.

‘That’s not all,’ he said soberly. ‘The prophecy is fulfilled and I am free from HER. I did try to escape, I was a kitten of spirit, but of course she caught me. As a punishment, and to make quite certain, she put another spell on me, and until that is broken I must be your slave instead. It was sheer extravagance throwing good magic about like that, but just like her. Spiteful.’

‘But I don’t want a slave! Carbonel dear, how can we undo it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the black cat soberly. ‘That’s just it. It was a Silent Magic – they’re the worst kind – and of course as it was silent I didn’t hear it. All I do know is that it must be undone with all the same things with which it was made. If you want to undo it you must have the hat and the cauldron. The broom you have already.’

‘But, of course, I want to undo the spell and set you free! Didn’t you see what she did with the other things?’

‘SHE sold them when I was away on an errand so that I should not know where they are. When we find them we’ve still got to discover the Silent Magic.’ There was silence in the little room, which was almost dark now. Even the noise of her mother’s sewing machine had stopped. Rosemary put herarm comfortingly round Carbonel.

‘We’re jolly well going to find everything. The first thing to do is to discover what has happened to the hat and the cauldron. We will start immediately after breakfast tomorrow!’

Suddenly she realized how sleepy she was.‘We’d better go to bed now.’ She padded across the linoleum of the bedroom floor and put the broom in the wardrobe. Before she slipped between the sheets she put both arms round Carbonel and gave him a hug, a thing she would have been rather shy of doing when she could hear him talking. But Carbonel seemed to bear her no malice and gave her cheek a little lick. Rosemary lay down and tucked up her linoleum-chilled toes in her nightdress. She was just dropping off to sleep when she thought to herself, ‘He didn’t tell me who his people are, or where they live.’

She was just wondering whether to get out of bed to fetch the broom to ask him, when somehow it was morning. The sun was streaming through the window and her mother was knocking on the door.

4

The Summoning Words

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The first thing that Rosemary thought of when she woke was Carbonel. She sat up and called him softly, but there was no answer. He was not on the bed, or under it. He was not even on the dusty little lead roof outside her window. Thinking back, the whole thing seemed so unbelievable that she began to wonder if perhaps she had dreamed it all. But when she went to look into the wardrobe there was the broom, looking rather forlorn in the corner behind her winter coat. Hearing her wrestling with the wardrobe which had a habit of sticking, Mrs Brown called through the door:

‘Rosie! Get dressed, darling. Breakfast is nearly ready and I don’t want to be late on my first day.’ So Rosemary hurried.

Although they could use Mrs Walker’s kitchen with the big black cooker, there was a gas ring and a fire in their room which they used whenever it was possible. With miracles of timing they managed to cook most of their meals here. Rosemary made the toast while her mother tidied the bedrooms.

‘I meant to go and ask Mrs Walker about your Pussums before I went this morning,’ called Mrs Brown through the open door, ‘but I doubt if I shall have time.’

‘He isn’t here, Mummy. When I woke up this morning he had gone. But I am quite sure he will come back. And please don’t call him Pussums, he doesn’t like it. His name is Carbonel.’ Her mother laughed again.

‘What a grand name! You know, if you brush him and feed him up I think he will be a beautiful cat… If he comes back. I had better wait until this evening, then if he is here I will go and see Mrs Walker. I do hope I can persuade her. It would be such company for you. Rosie, darling, do be careful!’

Through the half-open door drifted the unmistakable smell of burning toast. The idea that Carbonel really might not come back filled Rosemary with such alarm that she forgot what she was doing. But of course he would come back! All the same it was a worrying idea. A second piece of toast was smoking ominously when her mother cam? in.

‘Rosie, how careless of you! Sitting there looking at it burning!’

‘I’m sorry, Mummy, I really am. I was thinking how awful it would be if Carbonel didn’t come back. I’ll eat the scraped bits of toast myself, really I will.’

‘Are you sure you won’t be lonely while I’m away, darling?’ said her mother anxiously over their boiled eggs.

‘Not a bit!’ said Rosemary, with such conviction that her mother was comforted. ‘When Carbonel comes back,’ Rosemary said to herself, ‘we will search the town until we find the hat and the cauldron, and I expect it will take days.’

‘I want you to take the dressing-gown round to Miss Withers for me this morning. I finished it last night,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘You had better go by bus, and be careful to change when you get to the Town Hall.’

To spend the morning going with a parcel to the other end of the town was the last thing that Rosemary wanted to do, but as she could not explain why, there was no help for it.

After her mother had gone Rosemary tidied the rooms and washed the dishes. Egg, as everyone knows, is one of the most clinging of things to wash away, and it all seemed to take her a very long time. When at last she had finished Carbonel had still not returned. She set out with her parcel, after leaving a saucer of milk in case he came back while she was away. She had half thought of using the broom again, and had got as far as peering into the gloom of the wardrobe, but the faint quiver she felt in the handle, without Carbonel to advise her, was a little alarming, so she said as carelessly as she could,‘I just looked in to see if you were all right,’ and shut the door again rather hurriedly.

It took her a long time to find the right house, but when she did Miss Withers gave her a piece of seed cake, which she did not much like, and sixpence, which she did. The sixpence she took to the fishmonger on her way home. He was a large man with large rubber boots and large hands permanently spangled with fish scales. As he was an old friend of Rosemary’s she told him what she wanted the fish for. He gave her half-a-pound of Coley and three shrimps, and he would only take fourpence.

‘The Coley’s for bread, as you might say, and the shrimpses is for jam,’ he explained.

Rosemary burst eagerly into the room when she reached home. The saucer she had left on the hearthrug was empty and polished clean, and Carbonel was lying curled up beside it. Rosemary dashed off for the broom and came whirling back.

‘Carbonel, you are very, very naughty! I’ve been so worried. Where have you been?’

The black cat stretched himself and yawned so that she could see his magnificent white teeth and his pink tongue, frilled like a flower petal, between.

‘I don’t know what you are making a fuss about,’ he said. ‘You could have said the Words and called me back again any time you wanted to.’

‘What Words?’ said Rosemary.

‘Oh, didn’t I tell you?’ She shook her head. ‘The Summoning Words. You simply say…

By squeak of bat,

And brown owl’s hoot,

By hellebore,

And mandrake root

Come swift, and silent

As the tomb,

Dark minion

Of the twiggy broom.

‘The merest doggerel I know, but it works. It wouldn’t be so humiliating if it were better poetry,’ he said bitterly. ‘Whenever you say it I’m bound to come, no matter how important the business I may be engaged upon. Have you never seen a black cat hurrying relentlessly along as though he’s being pulled by an invisible string? Well, that is what has happened to him, not a doubt.’

Rosie repeated the rhyme until she had learned it by heart.

‘It doesn’t sound very polite,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I wouldn’t quite like to call you, “minion of the twiggy broom”.’

‘Well, you’ll have to get over that if you want to summon me. You can’t expect magic to be ladylike. And that reminds me. I was looking at the broom before you came in and there is precious little life in the old thing.’

Rosemary looked at it thoughtfully. It was indeed a sad sight. It reminded her of a parrot she had once seen that was moulting.

‘When the last of those twigs drop off, her power has gone, and it will be too late to find the cauldron and the steeple hat, and I shall be your slave for ever whether you want it or not.’

‘Couldn’t we mend it somehow?’ said Rosemary. ‘I could tie on the twigs with string or raffia or something.’ Carbonel was horrified.

‘Good gracious, no! You can’t mend magic with string!’ he said in a shocked voice. ‘You will be suggesting glue and tin-tacks next. A few weeks ago the cauldron sprang a leak, and SHE insisted on filling up the hole with one of those pot-mender things you get at an ironmonger’s, at sixpence a card. And what was the result?’He paused dramatically.

‘What?’ breathed Rosemary.

‘Her spells worked out lumpy. But I tell you what, we’ve no time to lose. We’d better start searching this afternoon.’

They had their dinner first. Rosie cooked the fish on the gas ring, and then she warmed up the stew that her mother had left her. They ate together in companionable silence on the hearthrug. Carbonel seemed really touched by the three shrimps.

‘A Prince of the Royal Blood,’ he said with emotion, ‘and yet nobody before has given me shrimps. I shall not forget.’

When they had finished they decided on the plan of action. It was agreed that they would do best to go back to Fairfax Market.

‘We must take the broom with us so that I can talk to you, but we mustn’t ride on it. I’ve still got tuppence from this morning so we can take a bus there, but we shall have to walk home.’

5

The Search Begins

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They reached the market without any adventures. The bus conductor was quite nice about Carbonel going on top, and insisted on calling Rosemary‘Miss Whittington’, which made everyone in the bus laugh. When they reached the Market it was looking as she had expected to find it the day before. There was a jolly bustle of busy people with bulging shopping bags and baskets, with the noise of people chatting, and stallholders crying their wares. Rosemary could have happily spent the afternoon just looking round, but she knew that more serious work was on hand. They had agreed to go round all the stalls that sold second-hand things first, in the hope that Mrs Cantrip might have sold the hat or the cauldron to one of them, and all the time they were to keep a lookout for the old woman herself. There was always the chance that they might find her there. Rather regretfully Rosemary left the cheerful stalls that sold fruit and groceries, and cotton frocks, and china ornaments. The second-hand stalls were on the edge of the Market, near the spot where Rosemary had bumped into Mrs Cantrip.

They were a little forlorn, these stalls, like the people who kept them. There were rickety bedsteads and lumpy mattresses for sale, chipped chests of drawers, and piles of old shoes and gramophone records, and bundles of spoons and forks tied up like bunches of flowers. There was an old-fashioned hip bath full of oddments marked‘All in this lot sixpence’ which Rosemary would have liked to explore.

‘Isn’t it funny how old clothes seem to go on being like the people who have worn them,’ she said to Carbonel, looking at a limp hat with feathers on it that was perched jauntily on top of a large chipped china jug.

‘That is just what I say,’ said an old man who was sitting on a chair behind a trestle table covered with old books. Seeing no one else near, he thought she was addressing him.

‘There’s more profit on new ’uns, but not the interest, I always say. Was you wanting something, dearie?’

He looked a kindly little man, and Rosemary plucked up enough courage to say,‘Please, have you got such a thing as a witch’s hat?’ The old man began to laugh, and he laughed until the laugh turned into a wheezy cough. When he had recovered, he wiped his red-rimmed eyes and said, ‘No, dearie, nor no fairy wands, neither. They’re in short supply at present.’ And he went off into another wheezy laugh at his own joke.

Rosemary moved on to the next stall. Quite clearly, she decided, she must use more guile.

‘Why don’t you use your eyes more!’ said Carbonel crossly. ‘That’s the worst of humans. They will talk too much.’

But use her eyes as she would, Rosemary could see no trace of the hat or the cauldron. There were half-a-dozen possible stalls, but she looked and looked and hung about until she felt she could write down from memory exactly what was for sale on each one. So she decided to walk round the Market on the chance of seeing Mrs Cantrip again. She walked all the way round, which took some time because she could not help stopping to look at most of the stalls, and then she found herself back at the wheezy old man. All this time Carbonel had padded quietly after her. Her legs were aching by now, so she sat down on an empty packing-case, and because she felt it was too public to talk to Carbonel she just stroked him instead. Suddenly the wheezy old man said:

‘Like an apple, ducks?’

It was rather a hard, green apple, but Rosemary was very grateful for it. She thanked him gravely and munched away.

‘That your cat?’ asked the old man. Rosemary nodded. ‘I don’t know when I see such a big ’un, except it was one I saw yesterday on this very spot. Belonged to an old woman. She was a caution!’ He broke off to laugh wheezily again.

‘You see some queer things in my trade, but I never see’d a queerer than she was. Like an old rag bag, with a little hat on top smart as kiss yer ’and. What’s the matter, ducks, a bit of apple gone down the wrong way?’

Rosemary nodded and wiped her eyes.

‘Was she selling anything?’ she asked as carelessly as she could when she had stopped coughing.

The old man wheezed again, but this time with indignation.

‘She stands next to me, and all she’s got to sell are an old hat – you never saw such a wreck of an old thing, black it was, with a point – and an old coalscuttle, one of them with three feet and a handle over the top. Fair crocked with soot, it was.’

‘How queer,’ said Rosemary. ‘Did she sell them?’

The old man went off into such a prolonged wheeze that she could have shaken him with impatience. When at last he emerged he said,‘Ah, she sold ’em right enough. There’d me been ’ere since nine o’clock, and all I’d sold was a book of sermons marked down to tuppence, and a pair of button boots, and ’ere is this old besom setting up for ’alf an hour, and blessed if she don’t sell ’er ’at and ’er coalscuttle right off! Some people don’t reckernize ’igh class goods when they sees ’em. Ah, and where was ’er licence I should like to know?’ he added darkly, dusting a glass case full of moth-eaten birds as he spoke.

‘But what sort of people bought them?’ asked Rosemary, quite surprised at her own cunning.

‘Well, I didn’t see who bought the coalscuttle. I’m not a one to go Nosey Parkering. But business being slack, I noticed a youngish fellow bargain with ’er for the ’at. Something artistic I’d say by the look on ’im. You gets to be a student of ’uman nature in my job. First thing I sizes up their clothes. ’Is was good but wore. Fifteen bob I’d ’ave given for ’is coat, and a tanner for ’is ’at, not a penny more, but a gentleman, mind. And would you believe it, when she asked a pound for her old ’at, ’e didn’t beat ’er down more than a couple of bob. Eighteenshillings ’e paid ’er for it, and looked at it all the time as if it was a picture of ’is long-lost ma. “Most interesting,” ’e kept saying, “A genuine seventeenth century beaver wotsit.” And the old woman grinning and cackling like a lunatic’

‘Who ever could it have been?’ said Rosemary.

‘Well, that’s what I says to myself. A chap wot’s silly enough to cough up the best part of a quid for something the cat might ’ave brought in, is too good to lose sight on. So I says wouldn’t ’e like to ’ave a look at some of my ’ats? But, bless you, ’e wouldn’t even look at myLeghorn with the roses. But when ’e’d gone I did find an old envelope. Dropped it, as like as not, when ’e got out ’is note-case.’

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‘Did it tell you his name?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Did it tell you his name?’ asked Rosemary, hardly able to hide her eagerness.

‘No! Just my luck. It only said “To the Occupier”, and ’is address underneath. It was one of those powdered soap coupons to buy a monster packet of Lathero for the price of a little ’un. I’ve got it somewhere.’ The old man rummaged about in his many pockets.

‘’Ere it is. The Occupier. You can ’ave it if you like. I daresay it would come in handy for your ma. My old woman don’t hold with these newfangled things.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ said Rosemary, and there was no doubt she meant it. She skipped off, clutching the envelope, and sat down on an upturned bucket behind a battered wardrobe where she was unlikely to be overheard talking to Carbonel. ‘It says “To the Occupier, 101 Cranshaw Road, Netherley”.’

‘You really handled that quite creditably,’ said Carbonel.

‘I wish we could go there straight away, but it is four o’clock already, and I promised I would have tea ready for Mummy when she came home. We had better go.’ Rosemary jumped up and started to walk rapidly the way they had skimmed so easily the day before on the broomstick. But with the letter in her pocket, the feeling that they had achieved something made the way home seem quite short. Carbonel padded silently on in front.

6

Mrs Walker Says‘No’

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Mrs Brown arrived just as Rosemary had finished laying tea. The kettle was boiling, and they sat down to a companionable meal of buttered toast and strawberry jam, with a large saucer of milk for Carbonel.

‘I hope it wasn’t too dull all by yourself, dear,’ said her mother anxiously.

‘Oh, no, Mummy, Carbonel and I went for a walk after we had had our dinner and it was… most interesting.’ Her mother smiled.

‘Well, I’ve got a surprise for you. You know how you have always wanted to see Mrs Pendlebury Parker’s house? Well, tomorrow she wants you to go with me and spend the day.’

‘Goodness!’ said Rosemary. ‘How lovely.’

And then she remembered how she had meant to spend the next day looking for Cranshaw Road.

‘But shouldn’t I be in the way?’ she said uncertainly.

‘Good gracious, not a bit in a house that size! You see, Mrs Pendlebury Parker has a young nephew coming to stay with her, and as she doesn’t know any children she asked if you would come and play with him. He is just about your age.’

Now in any other circumstances Rosemary would have been delighted at the very idea of seeing for herself the glories of Tussocks, which sounded from her mother’s description like a fairytale palace. It never occurred to Mrs Brown that there could be anything that her young daughter would rather do next day, so that she did not notice Rosemary’s lack of enthusiasm.

‘You had better wear your new gingham frock. It is lucky it is clean. Now as soon as we’ve cleared away I’ll go down and ask Mrs Walker if we may keep the cat. He is a handsome animal. I do hope she will say “yes”.’

‘I’ll wash up the tea things, Mummy, if you will go and ask her now,’ said Rosemary.

Mrs Brown went down the six flights of stairs and Rosemary folded up the cloth and got out the enamel bowl for washing up. It took rather a long time to clear away as she was only using one hand. The other was holding the broom so that she could talk to Carbonel.

‘If only I could have gone to Tussocks another day!’ she complained. Carbonel seemed unruffled.

‘As long as you don’t use the broom and go wearing it out for nothing, there is no need to get into such a fantod about it. If you are going to do magic, even elementary stuff, you’ll have to learn that time is merely a figure of speech.’

‘Is it?’ said Rosemary. Half her attention was concentrated on the wobbly pile of cups and saucers she was carrying with one hand, and at the same time she was wondering if she could tell Miss Pettigrue that time was merely a figure of speech next time she was late for school.

‘Besides,’ went on Carbonel, ‘I have important things to see to that would not interest you.’

‘How do you know they would not interest me?’ said Rosemary, a little ruffled. It really was difficult to clear away with one hand. ‘Oh, don’t go to sleep, Carbonel! Mummy will be back at any minute, and then you won’t be able to talk to me any more.’

The cat, who had curled himself up on the hearthrug, yawned elaborately.‘Well, you were not interested enough to ask me what I was doing last night and this morning,’ he said huffily. ‘Not so much as a “Hope you enjoyed yourself”.’ He turned in his paws and closed his eyes to mere golden slits. ‘Besides,’ he added sleepily, ‘you really can’t wash-upwith one hand, so you had better put the broom down,’ and he shut his eyes firmly. Not another word would he say.

Rosemary splashed the plates so vigorously that a good deal of the water slopped over on the floor, which made her cross.‘Really, Garbonel behaves sometimes as though he has bought me, not the other way round.’

But Rosemary was not a sulky child, and as soon as she heard her mother coming slowly across the landing she forgot everything except the fact that they sounded like the footsteps of someone who has not good news to tell.

‘It’s no use, Rosie,’ said Mrs Brown sadly, ‘Mrs Walker won’t hear of having a cat in the house!’

‘Mummy, what shall we do?’

‘Poppet, I said everything I could think of to make her change her mind. I told her how useful he would be for catching mice. But she only sniffed and said there had never been a mouse in the house in her day. I’m so sorry, darling. I’m afraid he will have to go.’

‘But I can’t send him away, not now I can’t!’ said Rosemary, scooping Carbonel up and hugging him fiercely. ‘Darling Carbonel, how could I?’ Two fat tears went rolling down her cheeks and fell with a splash on to the cat’s black fur. He struggled violently, and when Rosemary put him down he stalked off, shaking each paw in turn.

‘If only we had our own little house, you should have half-a-dozen cats,’ said Mrs Brown.

‘I don’t want half-a-dozen cats. I want Carbonel.’

‘Well, use my hankie and cheer up. Suppose we keep him until the morning and see if we can think of something. I never thought I should ever want to live in a house that was full of mice!’ said Mrs Brown. Rosemary was startled to hear Carbonel say ‘Don’t worry, you will!’

She looked up in alarm, but her mother was quietly putting the china away in the cupboard. Then she noticed that when she had flung herself down to pick up Carbonel she had put her hand accidentally on the handle of the broom which was sticking out from where she had pushed it under the sofa. Of course, her mother could not have heard. Rosemary looked sharply at Carbonel, but he was sitting on the hearthrug, absorbed in washing himself, with one of his hind legs sticking straight up in the air.

‘Will you come and talk to me in bed like you did last night?’ she whispered. Carbonel paused for a moment.

‘Not tonight. I shall be too busy.’

‘And please don’t be cross with me,’ she bent down to whisper, ‘it isn’t fair.’

But her mother had returned and Carbonel did not reply. Instead he lifted his head and with a warm, wet, rasping tongue gave her cheek a little lick. Comforted, Rosemary sat beside him on the hearthrug and stroked him very gently on the top of his satin-smooth head.

7

Carbonel and Mrs Walker

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When Rosemary woke next morning it was not to a feeling of pleasure at the prospect of the visit to Tussocks, but to one of uneasiness. At first she could not think what it was that was worrying her, but as her mind wandered sleepily back over the events of yesterday, it came to her quite suddenly. Mrs Walker would not let her keep Carbonel. And as suddenly she was wide awake and jumping out of bed.

The cat was not in her bedroom. Neither was he in the sitting room, where her mother was getting breakfast.

‘Never mind!’ said Mrs Brown when she saw her daughter’s anxious face. ‘Perhaps it is just as well he should take himself off, if Mrs Walker won’t let us keep him. I have been wondering how on earth we could find another home for him. But go and get dressed, darling. Had you forgotten youare coming with me today?’

Rosemary put on her newest gingham frock with none of the satisfaction that it usually gave her. She tidied her bedroom and made her bed with special care, and all the time she was making desperate plans for keeping Carbonel secretly in the tumbledown rabbit hutch in the yard.

‘But I don’t suppose he’d so much as look at a rabbit hutch,’ she thought, as she smoothed the bedspread with the exactness of thoughtful misery. ‘He would probably be offended at the very idea.’

During a rather silent breakfast, Rosemary was making patterns on her buttered toast with the point of her knife when there was an unmistakable‘Mew’ outside the door. Rosemary ran to open it, and sure enough, there was Carbonel! He trotted into the room with a smug expression on his face, without so much as a glance at Rosemary. Her mother, who was secretly feeling that it would have been much simpler if the cat had not come back, looked at her daughter’s worried face and reproached herself.

‘Let’s give him some milk, Poppet. But what to do about him I just don’t know! We simply must get ready to go now.’

Rosemary had such a tight feeling in her throat that she did not dare to say anything. She poured out a saucer of milk and was listening to the cat’s rhythmical lap-lap, lap-lap, when there was a knock on the door. Before her mother had time to say ‘Come in!’ Mrs Walker burst into the room.

‘Oh, Mrs Brown!’ she said. ‘It’s a judgement on me for saying you could not keep your cat. I never saw the like!’

‘Good gracious, what has happened? You look so upset! Now do sit down and let me give you a cup of tea. It has not been standing long.’

‘The kitchen!’ gasped Mrs Walker. ‘It’s full of mice, hundreds of them! You never saw anything like it! And me that’s always said that mice is vermin, and there’s only vermin where there’s dirt, and not a mouse in the house in all the fifteen years I’ve been here. Would you believe it? I opened the kitchen door to cook my old man a pair of kippers for ’is breakfast – he’s partial to kippers, Alfred is – and it fair turned me over. I can’t abide them!’

Rosemary, who gathered it was mice that Mrs Walker could not abide, and not kippers, looked at Carbonel. He was tactfully keeping out of sight behind the horsehair sofa, but she could see that he had finished the saucer of milk and was looking as self-satisfied as if it had been a bowl of cream. He opened his great golden eyes and looked full at Rosemary, and could it be? She was not quite certain, but it almost seemed as if one eye flickered in a wink.

‘I shall never feel easy in that kitchen again,’ said Mrs Walker.

‘But it will be quite all right,’ said Rosemary. ‘You see, we did not get rid of my cat last night.’

‘We were going to see if we could find a home for him today,’ broke in Mrs Brown hurriedly.

Rosemary picked up Carbonel; it needed both arms.‘But isn’t it a good thing we’ve still got him? Because I’m sure he will get rid of your mice for you.’

‘I think you would find the very fact that there was a cat in the house would keep the mice away,’ said Mrs Brown.

‘Well, he’s a handsome animal, that I will say,’ said Mrs Walker. ‘You can keep him and welcome, if only he’ll get rid of the mice!’

‘Rosie, dear, take him down to the kitchen and leave him there…’

‘Yes, dearie, do! And I’ll give your mum a hand with her dirty crocks; I expect she wants to be getting off to work. I couldn’t stay in the kitchen while…’ Mrs Walker broke off and shuddered.

Carbonel had already struggled out of Rosemary’s arms and was standing expectantly by the door. As her mother said, he might have understood every word. She opened the door and he ran down the stairs so quickly that Rosemary had no time to fetch the broomstick. So it was an entirely one-sided conversation she held with him on the way down. Explanations would have to wait till later.

‘I don’t know how you did it, but it was very clever of you! And now you can stay with us for always and always! At least, until you have to go away. How glorious!’

They had reached the basement by now, where Mrs Walker lived with her husband. Carbonel was scratching impatiently at the kitchen door. Rosemary turned the handle and looked in. The noise of squeaking was deafening. There were mice all over the place; they were scuttering over the linoleum and running up and down the lace curtains that hid the dismal view of the dustbins in the yard. They were playing hide-and-seek in the rag rug on the hearth and nibbling the loaf that stood on the table. There was even one peering out of the Coronation mug that held the place of honour on the mantelpiece. Rosemary took all this in in a flash, and at the very same time she remembered something which in the excitement of the moment she had forgotten. She remembered the way in which cats generally get rid of mice. Surely Carbonel was not going to eat them? She shut the door hurriedly and retreated to the bottom step of the flight of stairs with her eyes tight shut and her fingers in her ears. Of course it was silly to expect a cat not to behave like a cat, even if he was a prince.‘All the same,’ thought Rosemary, ‘there must have been hundreds of them! It seems horrible, because he must have tricked them somehow into coming, and the one in the Coronation mug did look so sweet!’

It seemed hours before she plucked up enough courage to open her eyes and take her fingers from her ears, but really it was only a few minutes. There was complete silence; not a squeak was to be heard. Then from the other side of the door came a faint‘Mew’. She stood up and walked slowly to the door. Once they had had a cat who caught a mouse now and then. He would eat up every bit except the tail, and that he would present to her mother as a great prize. Would she find…? But wondering only made it worse. She took a deep breath and flung open the door. There was no sign of any movement, not a mouse was to be seen, but where the loaf of bread had been on the trencher were now only a few crumbs. Carbonel stalked past her slowly and with great dignity. Licking his whiskers he mounted the stairs as though it was rather an effort.

Mrs Walker was waiting for them.

‘You ’ave been quick, dearie! Has ’e done it?’

Rosemary nodded.

‘Thank you ever so! Well, it beats me how it happened. Not a mouse in fifteen years and then ’undreds!’

‘I have heard of mice moving in a body from some building which has been pulled down,’ said Mrs Brown.

‘Depend upon it, that’s it!’ said Mrs Walker. ‘Though why they have to pick on my house to come to I really do not see!’

‘It certainly is a most extraordinary thing,’ said Mrs Brown.

‘Oh well, I’ll be glad to have a cat around, Rosie, so I’ll feed ’im while you are gone. I ’ear you are going with your ma today. Well, I must get on with my old man’s kippers.’ And full of smiles Mrs Walker went downstairs.

‘It’s very odd,’ said Mrs Brown when she had gone, ‘but it could not have happened at a better time for us! Just look at that cat!’

Carbonel was lying on the hearthrug, looking so portly that it was not surprising that he seemed reluctant to curl up in his usual way. Rosemary wondered if perhaps he could not curl up if he wanted to. He lay stretched on his side, purring deeply.

‘You had better go and get ready,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Put on your better sandals, the ones that have just been mended, and don’t forget a clean hankie.’

When Rosemary was holding the broomstick and could hear him talk she was always a little in awe of Carbonel, but now he was silent and sleeping like any hearthrug animal, so without any ceremony she scooped him up in her arms, too sleepy to struggle, and dropped him on her bed. Then she whirled to the wardrobe and fetched the broom.

‘How could you!’ she said, stamping her foot. ‘It was hateful of you!’ Carbonel opened his eyes sleepily, and his purr took on a deeper, slower note.

‘I’ve never had such a meal in my life,’ he said dreamily.

‘Did you eat them all?’ said Rosemary incredulously.

‘Heads, tails, and backbones,’ said Carbonel, ‘and left not a wrack behind! Shakespeare,’ he added graciously.

‘Then I think you ought to be ashamed of yourself! Just for your own ends to eat all those dozens of poor little mice!’

Carbonel opened his eyes very wide.

‘Who said anything about mice? It was the kippers I ate, two pairs of them. They were on the floor, and everyone knows that is where the cat’s food is put. If they weren’t put there on purpose I can’t help that. In any case it was the least she could do, putting me to all that trouble. I had to round up all the mice in Tottenham Grove and then explain what I wanted them to do. It took me all night. I didn’t touch a whisker of them,’ he said with righteous indignation. ‘I’d given them my word, hadn’t I? The only way I could get them to come was by promising a truce for six weeks. Oh, they drove a hard bargain, I can tell you. Six weeks without a mouse! It’s positive cruelty. Now run away and leave me to sleep it off.’ And he curled himself up like a foot-warmer.

Rosemary was filled with a wave of self-reproach. How could she have thought so badly of him? She bent down over the sleeping animal and whispered,‘I’m sorry I was so silly. Please forgive me.’

But there was no answer, so she put the broom in the wardrobe and tiptoed away.

8

Tussocks

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By the time that Rosemary had arrived at Tussocks, Mrs Pendlebury Parker’s house, she had decided that she was not going to think about witches, or broomsticks, or anything magic at all for the whole day. It was really rather a relief. She wondered if the house would be anything like she had imagined it, and what the boy she would have to play with would be like.

The house turned out to be larger even than Rosemary had imagined. It had been built in the reign of Queen Victoria, so her mother said, by Mrs Pendlebury Parker’s grandfather, who had made a lot of money in cotton, and then moved to the south to try to forget how he had made it. The house had towers with blue slate roofs and battlements of stone and very bright red terracotta gargoyles all over the place. Although Mrs Brown said it was ugly, Rosemary thought it was beautiful, and would be a wonderful place to play in. They went to a side door where a cheerful-looking maid in a pink striped dress let them in.

‘You’re to come straight upstairs, Mrs Brown,’ she said. ‘Mrs P’s not up yet. And is this your little girl? Well, if she can keep that young limb out of mischief we shall all be grateful. But when a child is all by himself with nothing to do, it stands to reason there is nothing to do butbe naughty.’

Rosemary was far too busy looking about her to listen to the conversation. They walked along several stone-paved passages, up some linoleum-covered stairs, and through a baize door. Here there was no stone or linoleum, but deep red carpet, and the sort of pictures on the walls that Rosemary had only seen in museums. She would like to have stopped to look at them, but she was afraid of being left behind. Presently the maid knocked at one of the doors and when a voice called‘Come in!’ she opened it.

‘Mrs Brown and the little girl, madam,’ she said.

Rosemary was aware of a very large room with a pale blue carpet and great furry white rugs. In a large four-post bed with an immense blue eiderdown, leaning against a great many pillows, sat a plump woman in a very frilly pink bed-jacket. They walked up to the foot of the bed and Rosemary noticed that the lady was not as young as she had thought at first.

‘So this is Rosemary!’ said Mrs Pendlebury Parker. ‘Come here, child.’ Rosemary went forward, tripping over a pair of slippers that seemed to consist largely of heels and feathers.

‘How do you do?’ she said politely.

‘Not very well this morning… My head, you know. But you look a nice little thing. I knew that your good mother could only have a nice little girl, so I thought it would be quite safe to ask you to play with Lancelot. Lance, dear, come here!’

There was a movement behind the heavy, blue damask curtains and a boy about the same height as Rosemary came towards them from the wide window-seat. He was scowling hideously, and his hands were pushed down to the bottom of his pockets.

‘Now you two are the same age, so you are sure to be friends!’ said Mrs Pendlebury Parker.

The boy scowled more deeply than ever. It was funny, thought Rosemary. Grownups took it for granted that children of the same age must always be friends. She found herself thinking that Mrs Pendlebury Parker and Mrs Walker must be about the same age, and yet it was very unlikely that they would be friends.

‘Now run along and play, dears, and do try to be good children!’

The boy looked at Rosemary, and with a nod of his head motioned her to the door and followed her out.

When he got outside he blew out his cheeks as though he was a balloon letting itself down.

‘She knows I hate it, and she will go on doing it.’

‘Who does what?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Aunt Amabel will call me Lancelot. Just because that was what her father was called – my grandfather, you know – I was called after him, to try to make him forgive Mum. But it didn’t, and so I’m branded with an awful name like that for the rest of my life for nothing.’

‘What had your mother done?’ asked Rosemary with interest.

‘Married my father. He was a poor artist. He still is. Daddy says nearly all good artists are poor until they’re dead. And now I’ve got to play with you.’

‘Well, I didn’t ask to play with you!’ said Rosemary. ‘Besides, it isn’t my fault what your aunt calls you, so I don’t see why you should be cross with me.’

The boy looked at her for the first time, and the scowl relaxed.‘I suppose it isn’t your fault. I say, you don’t look half so bad as I expected. You can call me John – that’s my other name. Nobody knows about Lancelot at school. Come on! Let’s go into the garden.’

They ran off together through the baize door, down the linoleum-covered stairs, and out into the garden.

‘Race you to the end of the terrace!’ said John.

They raced, but it was Rosemary who got there first. There was a semi-circular stone seat at the end with a canopy of pale golden roses growing over it, so they sat down to get their breath back again.

‘You know,’ said John, ‘I thought that any girl that Aunt Amabel produced would be all frills and white shoes, not sandals and a cotton frock like my sister. She’s got measles. My sister, I mean. That’s why I’m here. She had to go and get it the very day before I came home from school.’

‘How sickening for her!’

‘Sickening for her?’ said John indignantly. ‘She’s got all the fun of having spots, and cut-out things in bed, and I’ve only got Aunt Amabel and this ghastly place!’

Rosemary’s eyes grew round.

‘But this is a lovely house!’

‘It would be all right, I suppose, if I was left alone, but it’s “Lance, dear, don’t do that!” and “Lance, dear, do do the other,” and “Keep your feet off the paint,” and “Don’t touch!” The only decent place is the kitchen garden, and that is pretty good. Let’s go and findsome goosegogs.’

9

John

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They spent a happy half-hour among the gooseberry bushes, where the fruit hung like golden lanterns among the dark leaves. They ate until the prospect of bursting even one more on her tongue made Rosemary look at them with distaste. Then they played Cowboys and Indians, and then they tried trawling along the widest gravel path with one of the nets off the gooseberry bushes. But they caught nothing except a couple of man-eating sharks (they were really sticks), so they thought they had better put the nets back before any more holes got torn. Then, feeling rather hot, they came out of the kitchen garden and lay flat on the dusty grass under the cedar tree on the lawn. It was really a very hot day. They could see the main drive from here before it curved round to the front door. Presently a sleek, black car slipped down the drive on the way to the main road.

‘How lovely to have a car like that,’ said Rosemary, sitting up and pouring a handful of dust from one cupped palm to the other.

‘Pooh! That’s nothing,’ said John carelessly. ‘Aunt Amabel has got three, counting the little grey one.’

‘Good gracious!’ said Rosemary, deeply impressed. ‘Have you got three?’

‘As a matter of fact we’ve got four, and a pony, and… and an aeroplane. What have you got?’

Rosemary was surprised. Somehow John did not look like the kind of boy to have a pony or an aeroplane. There was a darn in the seat of his grey flannel shorts, and the rubber was beginning to peel from the toes of his sandals. She did not boast herself as a rule, but it seemed hard not to be able to produce anything at such a challenge, so without bothering about the consequences she said,‘I’ve got a witch’s broom and a cat that talks.’

‘That’s silly,’ said John. ‘You couldn’t have.’

Rosemary sat up cross-legged and very straight. Her face had gone quite red.

‘I have, so there!’

John rolled over and looked at her.

‘All right, you needn’t get so waxy!’

‘But you don’t believe me, and it’s true!’

‘Bet you can’t prove it!’

‘Right,’ said Rosemary hotly, ‘I will! I know a magic spell that will make the cat come to me, whether he wants to or not.’

‘All right!’ said John, grinning hatefully. ‘Say it!’

Rosemary stood up. Could she remember the Summoning Words? She screwed up her eyes and said a little uncertainly:

By squeak of bat

And brown owl’s hoot,

By hellebore,

And mandrake root,

Come swift and silent

As the tomb,

Dark minion

Of the twiggy broom.

She opened her eyes again and looked anxiously round. There was no Carbonel.

‘I say, you do do it well!’ said John with a note of real admiration in his voice, which at any other time would have given her great satisfaction. But the way in which he did not even trouble to show that he did not believe her, made her bite her lip with vexation. She looked round desperatelyfor Carbonel once more, and seeing nothing but the sun-baked lawn, to her own surprise burst into tears. John sat up.

‘I say,’ he said awkwardly, ‘whatever is the matter? I didn’t really think you would believe any of that stuff about me having a pony, and an aeroplane. Of course we haven’t. We’ve only an old rattle-trap of a car. It was only a game. You had better have my hankie. I’ve got one today,’ he said with modest pride. Rosemary was feeling for hers in her knicker leg without success.

‘But it is true,’ she sniffed obstinately. ‘I have got a broomstick that flies, and a witch’s cat…’ And out came the whole story.

John listened with open mouth. She described how she lived with her mother, and how she had gone to Fairfax Market, and all the strange things that had happened since.

‘Gosh!’ said John, when she had finished. ‘I say, you are lucky! Oh, not the broom business. That’s all pretend, though you tell it awfully well. I mean you are lucky getting your own dinner, and cooking it yourself on a gas-ring. It must be wizard!’

Rosemary was just going to say once more that it was not pretend, but she stopped herself. After all, she could hardly blame him for not believing her. A week ago she would not have believed it herself, and there was some consolation in John’s genuine envy for the gas-ring dinners. A discreet booming noise came from the house.

‘That’s the first gong for lunch,’ said John. ‘We’d better go and wash. Aunt Amabel is fussy.’

As they walked towards the house, he told her that although his mother was Mrs Pendlebury Parker’s sister, they were always hard-up, that he had a sister of twelve (the one with measles), and a small brother of four, and they lived in the country. It all sounded very jolly.

10

The Spell Works

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Lunch promised to be rather an alarming meal at first. Rosemary knew that her mother had hers on a tray in the sewing room, but she herself was to join Mrs Pendlebury Parker and John in the great dining room, a huge room with a floor polished like a mirror, and French windows opening on to the terrace. There was an alarming number of knives and forks by her plate, but by watching carefully she managed to use the right ones. Mrs Pendlebury Parker clearly meant to be kind, even if she was not very understanding, and by the time they had started on their pudding, which was a wonderful concoction of fruit and cream, Rosemary had lost her shyness.

‘What an awful lot of washing up there must be here,’ she said as she helped herself to the dish that was handed round to her.

Mrs Pendlebury Parker smiled, and then she gave a little scream.

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‘It is my darling cat!’

‘Good gracious! What’s that by your chair?’

Rosemary looked down, and there beside her, covered with dust, sitting sedately with his tail curled round his paws, was Carbonel!

‘It is my darling cat!’ said Rosemary, falling on her knees beside him, her pudding forgotten.

John stood up to see and spilled his glass of water.

‘Really, Lance dear, how careless of you! Ring for Walters and ask her to bring a cloth. But what a clever pussy, and what a lucky girl you are to have such a faithful friend.’

Mrs Pendlebury Parker bent down and stroked Carbonel, who had struggled from his young mistress.

‘He must have walked miles and miles to find you! The dear, faithful Pussicuddlums! Oh, Walters, bring a cloth, please, and mop up this mess. Oh, and I think you had better bring some food for the cat. NOT in darling Popsey Dinkums’ dish, I couldn’t bear that. Popsey Dinkums was my beautiful prize pussy, Rosemary. The purest gold and such wonderful eyes. You can’t think how I miss him since he disappeared four months ago. But this is a most remarkable cat of yours, quite extraordinary!’

Rosemary agreed.‘Just how extraordinary, you have no idea!’ she thought to herself. Had Carbonel really come in answer to the Summoning Words? She could think of no other reason. It was pleasant to see John’s face with eyes still like saucers. He clearly thought it was due to the spell. Her triumph would have been complete if the cat had been in the least pleased to see her. As it was, he ignored her completely, and was giving Mrs Pendlebury Parker all his attention while she rubbed him behind the ears, talking to him in a kind of baby language that Rosemary privately thought rather silly.

John was automatically eating his pudding, while his round eyes never left Carbonel.

‘I was just wondering what we had better do with him until you go home, dear,’ said Mrs Pendlebury Parker. ‘I don’t think he should be allowed to wander off again.’

‘Perhaps he could stay with Mummy,’ said Rosemary.

‘What a good idea! Now finish up your pudding and then you shall take him along. Lancelot dear, you know where the sewing room is.’

Rosemary would have liked a second helping, but she slipped off her chair and with both arms round Carbonel she set off, with John leading the way with the dish of food. It looked very much like chicken.

The sewing room had once been a school-room. It was cool and pleasant, with two comfortable, battered basket chairs, a big table with a sewing machine and a dressmaker’s dummy that looked exactly like Mrs Pendlebury Parker. Mrs Brown was finishing her lunch.

‘Mummy!’ burst out Rosemary. ‘Here’s Carbonel! He has come all the way from Tottenham Grove to find me. Isn’t he clever? And can he stay with you this afternoon until we go home?’

‘Of course he can, dear!’ Mrs Brown looked anxious. ‘I do hope that Mrs Pendlebury Parker was not annoyed?’

‘Oh no, not a bit. She was very kind, and ordered this gorgeous dinner for him. We had a heavenly pudding. It looked like sand pies with frothy stuff on top, only it didn’t taste like that, of course. Oh, I forgot. This is John.’

John shook hands.

‘Are you sure your aunt was not cross about the cat?’

‘Aunt Amabel is potty about cats, so it didn’t matter a bit. I say, he is walloping down his dinner!’

‘Well, he has certainly earned it. What an extraordinary animal he is. What did you two do this morning?’ asked Mrs Brown.

‘Played,’ said John. ‘Do you know, it’s the first morning I haven’t got into trouble since I’ve been here? I say, I like having Rosemary. Do you think you could ask me to your house one day?’

Mrs Brown smiled ruefully.‘I’m afraid it isn’t a house, only three rooms. Wouldn’t you find it rather dull?’

‘But I shouldn’t!’ said John. ‘We could cook our own dinner. Rosemary says she often does.’

‘Oh, yes!’ said Rosemary. ‘Do let’s! What would you like for dinner?’

‘Baked beans and sausages,’ said John promptly.

‘Mummy, please!’

Mrs Brown laughed.‘If it rested with me I should say yes, but it depends on what your aunt thinks about it.’

‘May we ask her, Mummy, please, for tomorrow?’

‘If you like, dear. Now off with you. I must get on with these curtains.’

Outside on the sun-warmed stone seat with the canopy of yellow roses, they sat and talked.

‘You see, if you would let me I could help you find the hat and the cauldron,’ said John. After the first surprise of Carbonel’s appearance he seemed to have accepted the whole story, as unquestioningly as you accept the fact that the world is round, when apparently it is so very flat.

‘That is a good idea,’ said Rosemary. ‘We should find them much more quickly with two people’s brains, and it would be so much more fun. Do let’s go and ask your aunt now!’

‘No good – she will be having a rest. We had better wait till tea time.’

So they played games until tea, with periodical visits to Mrs Brown and Carbonel, and after tea, which was raspberries and cream, and the thinnest bread and butter that Rosemary had ever seen, they tried their luck. Mrs Pendlebury Parker frowned.‘I don’t think Mrs Brown should have suggested such a thing without consulting me first.’

‘But she didn’t, Aunt Amabel. It was my idea. Mrs Brown said she did not think you would approve, but that, of course, we could if you said yes. Oh, please!’

‘But you two children would be quite alone! I don’t think that would be at all suitable.’

‘We shouldn’t really be alone,’ said Rosemary. ‘At least not more alone than if we were playing in a room here. You see, there is Mrs Walker in the basement, and Mr and Mrs Tonks on the first floor, and the Smithers on the second, and Miss Tidmarsh just below. And we would promise to be sensible!’

‘There are other people in the house, then? That does make a difference, of course. As a matter of fact I have to have lunch with Lady Bermondsey tomorrow, and I was wondering…’

‘And besides,’ said John, ‘Daddy says that you can’t have one-sided hospitality – it isn’t democratic.’

‘So like him,’ said Mrs Parker tartly. ‘But all the same, if you don’t think Mummy would mind…?’

‘Then I may go? Tomorrow? Oh, thank you, Aunt Amabel!’

‘I’ll take great care of him,’ said Rosemary. ‘And thank you for a lovely day!’

Mrs Pendlebury Parker laughed and called to John, who was already halfway out of the door:

‘Lancelot, tell Jeffries that he had better take Mrs Brown and Rosemary home at five o’clock in the car. I don’t see how they could manage with the cat, otherwise.’

11

Showing Off

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Rosemary and her mother thanked Jeffries, the chauffeur, and got out of the car at number ten, Tottenham Grove. Rosemary rather hoped that one of her friends would see them, but the only person to notice was the boy delivering evening papers, and he only noticed Carbonel in her arms.

He sang out rudely:

Does your mother want a rabbit?

Skin her one for ninepence!

She felt Carbonel stiffen angrily.

‘Well, darling, did you enjoy it?’ said her mother when they reached their room and she was taking off her hat.

‘Mummy, it was lovely! I liked John awfully, and the garden, and the scrumptious pudding. And Mrs Pendlebury Parker was very kind! But you only had rice and stewed fruit. I saw when we came to see you.’

‘It was very nice rice pudding,’ said Mrs Brown as she ran her fingers through her hair. ‘And as for Carbonel…!’

There was a knock on the door.

‘Oh dear, that sounds like Mrs Walker again. Come in!’ she called.

‘Oh, there you are, dear,’ panted the landlady.‘These stairs will be the death of me! I just came up to see if the cat was here. It’s a funny thing, I’d just put down a plate for ’im this morning with some nice bits of liver, and ’im purring for it like a steam engine, when ’e suddenly lifts up ’is head and gives a little mew, angry like, and off he goes up the area steps as if the dogs was after ’im! And I ’aven’t seen him since. I wouldn’t like…’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs Walker,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘A most extraordinary thing! He suddenly turned up at Mrs Pendlebury Parker’s house this afternoon. It must be every bit of six miles.’

‘Well I never!’ said Mrs Walker.

Rosemary looked at Carbonel, but he still ignored her, as he had done all afternoon. She was not feeling very comfortable about her own behaviour over the Summoning Words. Was she right to have used them as she did? But as sometimes happens when we are afraid we are in the wrong she took refuge in being cross. She had been looking forward to a good long talk all day, but when she saw him going off with Mrs Walker without so much as a glance in her direction, she said to herself that she didn’t care in the least, and that she would not talk to him if she could, and perhaps that would teach him!

By bedtime she would have given a good deal to have seen him curled up on the eiderdown. She could have said the Summoning Words, but she felt a little shy of using them again, and besides, it seemed wasteful to use magic to fetch him from the basement. Rather like hiring a taxi to go to the corner of the road. She knew he would come back in the end, so there was nothing to do but wait patiently.

When her mother had gone next morning, Rosemary tidied up the flat with special care, and then she hurried off to the shops. She bought a pound of sausages, the thin kind, a large tin of baked beans, two cream buns, two gob-stoppers for dessert, a bunch of cornflowers, and two ounces of sprats as a peace offering for Carbonel. The cornflowers were only twopence because they were just beginning to go white at the edges. She would like to have set it all out on her best doll’s tea service, but she was not sure if John would laugh, so she decided not to. She poked her head into the wardrobe to see if the broom was all right and, thinking it must be rather dull for the poor thing, she took it out and laid it carefully on her bed with the precious twigs on the pillow.

At 11 o’clock she was watching for John through the window, but it was a large black car that stopped at the door, not the smaller grey one in which they had come last night. John was already on the way upstairs when she ran down. She could see Mrs Walker on the floor below peering suspiciously after him.

‘I say, I am glad you’ve come! I was afraid something would happen to stop you.’

‘It’s all right, Aunt Amabel has gone on in the car to a committee. Jeffries is coming about three o’clock to take us both back to Tussocks to tea. It’s all arranged. I say, where is the cat and the broom?’

‘Carbonel has gone off on his own. He does sometimes, you know. I’m afraid he is cross with me about that spell yesterday. But there is the broom… oh, please be careful!’

John had picked it up without ceremony, and was examining it with an incredulous expression.

‘What a mouldy old thing!’ he said cheerfully.

‘It’s not!’ said Rosemary hotly. ‘And if it was it would be very unkind to tell it so. You must be very gentle with it.’

‘Well, how do I make it take me for a ride?’

‘You don’t make it. You ask it very politely, in rhyme.’

‘Do you mean to say that I’ve got to make up poetry?’ said John in the same voice he would have used if he had been asked to jump over the moon.

‘I’ll do it, because it is my broom,’ said Rosemary. ‘At least, I’ll try. It must be only a tiny ride because of not wearing out the magic. I should think round the sitting room.’

They fetched a piece of paper, and after much argument and biting of the pencil they produced a rhyme that they both secretly thought rather good.

‘Now, stand astride the handle, say it aloud, and then hold tight!’

John did as he was told and said loudly:

Round and round the sitting room

Kindly take me, magic broom.

With a jerk that nearly threw him off, the broom rose into the air with John astride, and swept into the sitting room. Round and round it went, about three feet from the floor. It was not very comfortable, because unless he kept his legs straight out in front they bumped into the furniture. As it was, he knocked the cornflowers over, so that the water streamed over Mrs Brown’s best tablecloth that Rosemary had taken without permission. The broom took the corners with a violence that would not have disgraced a Dodg’em. But John held on and went careering round with shining eyes, making penetrating jet plane noises.

Rosemary was delighted. Now he would have to believe that the story she had told him was true! Round and round went the broom. Presently John stopped making jet noises, and a little later he stopped smiling.

‘I say, Rosie!’ he called, ‘I think I’ve had enough. How do I stop it?’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Rosemary. ‘We didn’t say in the rhyme how many times round we wanted it to go.’

‘Well, hurry up and tell it now… I’m not feeling very well.’

‘I’ll try,’ said Rosemary anxiously, ‘but I shall have to get some paper. I can’t do poetry without.’

She had no idea what they had done with the pencil, and when she found it at last under the bed she was so flustered she could think of no rhymes at all. By this time a very pale John was clinging on to the broom with both arms. Rosemary bit the pencil and screwed up her eyes until it hurt, but it was no use. She could think of no poetry at all. John was just saying faintly:

‘I think I’m going… to be…’ when Carbonel walked silently into the room.

Rosemary fell on her knees beside him.

‘Oh, Carbonel, darling! Please, please stop the broom! We forgot to say how many times round it was to go, and now it won’t stop! And John looks as if he’s dying. Whatever shall we do?’

There was no reply, only a faint moan from John, and Rosemary added:

‘But it is no good telling me because I can’t hear!’

The cat struggled free from her enclosing arms and stalked into the centre of the room. There was a pause, and then, haltingly, as though he was waiting to be prompted, John said faintly:

Forgive my rude untutored tongue,

Remember I am very young.

On the bed I pray you lay me,

Or my ride will surely slay me!

And at once, gently as a boat sailing on a peaceful sea, the broom skimmed the bedroom and settled down on Rosemary’s bed, where John lay beside it, thankful for the feel of solid, if rather lumpy, mattress beneath him. Rosemary, wide-eyed and anxious, followed with Carbonel. The black cat put his front paws on the bed and looked at John’s closed eyes and pale face, and Rosemary quickly put her hand on the broom.

‘He’ll be all right in a minute. It all comes of showing off,’ said Carbonel severely. ‘First it was yesterday, you saying the Summoning Words, and me just settling down to my dinner… as nice a bit of liver as I’ve ever seen… to hurry six miles in the sweltering heat, and for what? Nothing at all,’ he added bitterly. ‘If you wanted to show what you can do, why couldn’t you have done something flashy… like turning this boy here into a beetle, or something…’

‘No fear!’ said John, struggling into a sitting position. The colour was returning to his cheeks.

‘Besides, I don’t know how to turn people into beetles,’ said Rosemary.

‘I suppose you don’t,’ said Carbonel grudgingly.‘But there is no excuse for showing off with the broom, when the poor old thing wants all the rest and quiet she can get. I saw several more twigs on the floor next door. And you must have offended her into the bargain. That’s why I put in that bit about “Pardon my untutored tongue.” She only takes her corners like that when she is upset.’

‘I expect that was me,’ said John. ‘I called her a… a mouldy old thing, but I’m awfully sorry. I think it’s a simply wizard broom!’

Rosemary felt the broom wince in a bridling sort of way under her hand.

‘There you go again! It isn’t a wizard broom. Don’t you know a witch’s broom when you see one?’

Rosemary put out her hand and stroked carbonel rather shyly on the top of his head with one finger.

‘Please don’t be cross any more. I said the Summoning Words because I couldn’t bear John not to believe about you. I only half thought they would work when I said them, and I promise never to say them again, unless it’s really important.’

Carbonel looked a little less severe. Rosemary transferred her stroking finger to the soft part underneath his chin, and he did not seem to mind.

‘But it is no good you doing slovenly spells like that,’ he said more gently. ‘The idea of not saying when you wanted the broom to stop! If I had not come back it would have to have gone on going round and round until all the twigs fell out of its tail, and it might have taken months!’

John shuddered.

‘Or until I could think of a rhyme, I suppose,’ said Rosemary.

‘Which would have been much the same thing, seemingly,’ said Carbonel tartly.

12

Carbonel Explains

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‘I say,’ said John. ‘If you want to take care of the twigs on the broom, why don’t you wrap something round them – brown paper, or something.’

‘It might help,’ said the cat doubtfully, ‘but not brown paper. The broom has got its feelings same as anyone else.’

‘I know,’ said Rosemary. ‘My shoe bag!’

She ran to the wardrobe, tipped out her gym shoes, and brought it to the bed. It was made of scarlet flannel.

‘Not a bad idea,’ said Carbonel grudgingly, as they slipped it carefully on. Rosemary drew up the strings and tied them securely.

‘What magic runes are on the side?’ asked the cat suspiciously.

The words ROSEMARY BROWN were embroidered in white chain stitch.‘We have to have that, so that it won’t get lost at school,’ said Rosemary.

‘That is the practical sort of magic that I like to see.’

By now John had completely recovered from his ride on the broom, and was bouncing up and down on the bed.

‘I say, I am hungry. Let’s fry those sausages.’

So they went into the sitting room. When they had mopped up the flower water which John had knocked over in his wild flight, the feast still looked pretty good. Carbonel seemed genuinely touched by the sprats which were piled up on a soup plate. Rosemary showed John how to prick the sausages and he fried everything they could find– two onions, some cold potatoes, and a slightly squashy tomato that made the fat splutter, as well as the sausages. It was a delightful meal, eaten in friendly silence, and neither of them minded that the potatoes were a bit burnt, or that all of the sausages had burst. Carbonel, replete with all the sprats and two saucers of milk, purred sleepily while they ate the cream buns (a little soggy here and there with flower water, but otherwise delicious). When they were comfortably licking the gob-stoppers, Carbonel got up, arched his back, delicately stretched first one front paw and then theother, and sat down, very upright, with his tail curled round his toes.

‘I have something to tell you,’ he said. ‘Today I went to see my People… Strictly incognito, of course.’

‘What does that mean?’ asked Rosemary.

‘I think it means pretending you are not yourself,’ said John.

‘That was where I went the night before,’ went on Carbonel, ignoring the interruption.

‘Goodness!’ said Rosemary. ‘You never told me!’

‘You never asked,’ said Carbonel shortly. ‘I told you that I am a Royal Cat, and that as soon as I am free I must return to my kingdom.’

‘But where is your kingdom?’ asked John.

‘Come here and I will show you.’

Carbonel trotted into Rosemary’s bedroom and jumped on to the window ledge.

‘Behold!’ he said dramatically. Rosemary looked down.

‘Do you mean the back yard?’ she asked doubtfully.

‘Good gracious, no! Don’t you see the roof tops, plains and valleys and canyons of them? And the forests of chimney stacks and wireless aerials stretching away and away into the golden afternoon? That is my kingdom, the undisputed territory of the cats. Now look down. What do you see?’

‘The dustbins in the yard,’ said John cheerfully. But Carbonel did not seem to be listening.

‘You see the garden wall stretching along the end of all the gardens in Tottenham Grove? All walls, like that one, are our highways. What else could they be there for? So many humans seem to think that the proper place for a cat is on the hearthrug. You might as well argue that the proper place for a bird is in a cage. No, it is on the roof tops that we are our true selves. There we live our secret lives, there we skirmish, we royster, we sing songs. Songs of such beauty that men throw up their windows and shout applause.’

Rosemary was not sure that it was always applause she had heard, but she did not say so. The houses of Tottenham Grove were taller than the ones on to which she looked from her bedroom window. She had always liked the huddle of roofs, with different shaped chimney pots, some with cowls that twisted and twirled with the wind, some clustered together in all shapes and sizes, and some in neat rows like sand pies on the beach. It might almost be some strange country, she thought. Below her she could see the top of the wall that stretched along the back of all the smutty little gardens of Tottenham Grove, with the side walls joining it like tributaries. She could see a couple of cats now trotting along, one of them in a purposeful way.

‘A lot of cats come into the garden,’ she said.

‘We colonize, of course,’ said Carbonel loftily. ‘But my poor People!’

‘Why, what has happened?’ said John.

‘When my father died,’ went on the cat,

‘mourned by all his subjects, I am told – Carbonel the Good he was called (may I be worthy of him) – there was no Royal Kit to take his place, since the rightful heir had been stolen.’

‘You?’ asked John.

Carbonel inclined his head.

‘What did they do?’

‘A couple of cousins tried their hand at ruling, but what could they be expected to do? Mere tabbies. Very distant cousins they were. Well, of course, the inevitable happened. They had no proper authority, and things began to get slack, and then, of course, the Alley Cats got restless. Always on the lookout for making mischief, they are.’

‘But who is King now?’ asked Rosemary.

Carbonel drew himself up, and surveyed the roof tops through half-closed eyes.

‘There can be no King until I return. Once a month since time immemorial we have held the Law Giving at the full moon. There my father, and his father, and his father’s father before that, dispensed justice and wisdom. These fellows make a mockery of it. They brawl and fight and challenge anyone to dispute their leadership. Of course, at first there were plenty of good and bad cats to cross claws with them. They fight for it every month till the strongest one wins, the winner calls himself King, and there he sits on the throne of my fathers until the next Law Giving, when another animal will dispute his claim. A sorry, battered collection of animals go limping home, I can tell you!’

‘How did you find out all this?’ asked John.

‘By getting into conversation with all sorts and putting two and two together. Mostly honest, decent house animals they were. There are plenty of them about, I can tell you, who are loyal to “The Cat Among the Stars”, as they call me. But the Alley Gats have got the upper hand. I heard today that for the last three months the same great ginger animal has been in command. He fights like a tiger, and levies I don’t know what taxes of kipper heads and sardine tins.’

‘But now you can go and turn him out, and it will all be right again!’ said Rosemary.

‘I bet you could beat him with one… one paw behind your back!’ said John. Carbonel graciously inclined his head.

‘No doubt. But what use is a King who is at the beck and call of somebody else? I am still a slave.’

‘Do you mean to me?’ said Rosemary. ‘But I wouldn’t beck and call, ever!’

‘So you may think now. But power does queer things, you know. The original Binding Spell is broken. Rosemary did that when she bought me with her three Queen Victoria farthings. But there still remains the second spell, the one SHE made when I tried to escape.’

‘Then we must set about finding the hat and the cauldron straight away!’ said Rosemary. She felt a little uncomfortable that the fun of meeting John had made her forget how important this was to Carbonel.

‘What do you do when you have got them?’ asked John, who was a practical person.

‘That is the worst of it. She made a Silent Magic, just to make it more difficult, so of course I never heard it. She is the only one who can tell you how to undo the spell.’

‘Oh dear!’ said Rosemary uneasily, thinking of the queer old woman.

‘Well, I tell you what,’ said John. ‘When Jeffries comes to fetch us this afternoon, let’s ask him to take us to that address you got at the market. You know, the man who bought the hat.’

‘What a good idea! Come on, let’s wash up quickly, so that we shall be ready when he comes.’

‘Do we have to?’ said John.

‘We do,’ said Rosemary firmly.

13

The Occupier

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While they washed up the dinner things they discussed their plans. What sort of person would have bought the witch’s hat from Fairfax Market? They did not even know his name. All they had to go on was the address on the envelope with the soap powder coupon in it, and that merely said:

To the Occupier, 101 Cranshaw Road, Netherley.

‘Youngish,’ the old man at the second-hand stall had said he was, wearing clothes that were ‘good but wore’.

‘Well, anyway, the first thing is to get Jeffries to take us there,’ said John. ‘I expect he will. He is a friend of mine. He can waggle his ears when he’s off duty. He let me help change a wheel once.’

‘You’d better leave me and Broom behind,’ said Carbonel. ‘Best draw as little attention to us as possible, and cats and witch’s besoms on buses are a bit conspicuous. You and your mother will be coming home from Tussocks by bus this time, I suppose, and it will be the rush hour.’

Jeffries was more amenable than they had dared to hope. He was a large, freckled young man who grinned readily.

‘You’re in luck. I know Cranshaw Road quite well. Pass it when I go to see my young lady,’ he said, flushing slightly.

‘Do take us there on the way home,’ said John. ‘Be a sport!’

‘You could leave us at number hundred and one, and then go and see your young lady, say for half-an-hour. It would be a lovely surprise for her!’ said Rosemary tactfully.

‘What are you young limbs up to?’ said Jeffries, but without malice.

‘Very important business,’ said John gravely. ‘Look here, couldn’t you leave us there for even twenty minutes?’

The prospect of seeing his young lady was more than the chauffeur could resist. He laughed.‘All right, you win!’ he said, and turned the car in the direction of Netherley.

‘Only half-an-hour, mind!’ called Jeffries, as he left them outside number hundred and one.

It was a large, comfortable Victorian house with a circular drive leading to the front door. Above the bell were three names, which seemed to indicate that the house was divided up into flats.

‘Don’t let’s stop to think, or I shall want not to,’ said Rosemary, clutching the envelope tightly. ‘Try the bottom bell.’

John nodded. He was already feeling‘want not to’, but nothing would make him admit it; with the result that he rang the bell rather harder than he meant to. It rang sharply in the distance, and a rather cross-looking woman in an overall opened the door.

‘Now go away,’ she said sharply. ‘’E doesn’t want any juveniles! As if I ’adn’t enough to do!’ she added mysteriously, and slammed the door.

Rosemary looked at John with dismay. But curiously enough with the ringing of the door bell his courage had revived.

‘Well, we’ve come all this way, so don’t let’s give up just for that. Let’s explore. Look here, that gate at the side is open and I can hear someone moving about. Let’s go and look.’

Cautiously they pushed one of the double doors and looked in. There was a paved yard flanked on one side by the kitchens of the house, and on the other by a building that must once have been stables, but was obviously used now as a garage. In the middle of the yard was a large, pale blue lorry, which said in newly painted scarlet letters,‘The Netherley Players’. Sticking out from under the lorry was a pair of legs in dirty grey flannel trousers. John and Rosemary advanced cautiously. They waited for a pause in the exasperated noises that were coming from underneath, and then John said: ‘Excuse me, but are you the Occupier?’

And the voice that had been making exasperated noises said absently,‘Well, that depends. I don’t occupy much. I’m away rather a lot. But the Briggs on the top floor are generally occupying.’

The voice went on jerkily, as though the owner was making some great effort,‘But the Pattersons might be said to occupy like mad. They’ve got three children.’

There was a sharp rattle, as of a spanner slipping, and a smothered exclamation, and the body belonging to the grey flannel legs squirmed into view, revealing a bright green open-necked shirt liberally smeared with oil. Rosemary supposed that the stallholder at the Market, who was old, might consider this a‘youngish man’. He stopped sucking his bleeding knuckles long enough to say:

‘But on the other hand, I am the old original Occupier. I say, what do you want to know for?’

‘We’ve brought something back for you. You dropped it at Fairfax Market,’ and she held out the crumpled envelope.

‘That’s very kind of you.’

The man took the envelope and looked inside.

‘What on earth is it?’

‘It’s a coupon that you can exchange for a large packet of Lathero for the price of a small one.’

‘But what on earth should I do with a packet of Lathero when I’d bought it?’

‘You could wash your shirt with it,’ said Rosemary gravely. ‘But you had better let me tie up your hand. It’s bleeding. I’ve got a clean hankie here.’

‘Washed, I suppose, with Lathero? You are an advertising stunt, aren’t you?’

‘Goodness no!’ said John, as Rosemary tied up the grazed hand. ‘You see, the old man said that you bought the hat.’

‘Aha! The incomparable witch’s hat! But look here, I don’t understand. How do you know anything about it?’

‘Well, you see,’ said Rosemary, ‘I’ve got the cat that belonged to the same witch, and the broomstick.’

‘On which you doubtless swept up to the front door,’ said the man with a twinkle.

‘Oh no, we came in Aunt Amabel’s car because we didn’t want to use up the broom’s magic. And Jeffries – he’s the chauffeur – he’s coming back to fetch us in half-an-hour, because he’s gone to see his young lady,’ said John.

‘I see,’ said the youngish man. ‘If you ask me, a broom is a much more civilized vehicle than a car. It doesn’t have to be screwed up with spanners that turn round and hit you.’ He looked ruefully at his bandaged hand. ‘But look here, suppose you tell me what you have really come for?’ And he grinned so encouragingly that Rosemary said:

‘We want the witch’s hat, please.’

The grin faded. There was an awkward pause, and the man called,‘Molly, can you come here a minute?’

A girl’s voice answered, ‘All right, but I shall never finish these tunics if you keep interrupting,’ and the awkwardness was broken by the arrival of a girl in tight-fitting slacks and a yellow sweater. She was pretty and looked kind, Rosemary decided thankfully.

‘What is it?’ she inquired.

‘Ask me another,’ said the young man, lighting a cigarette. ‘These youngsters want the hat I bought at Fairfax Market.’

‘But what for? Look here, come upstairs, then we can sit down and discuss it comfortably.’

They walked in procession into a garage and up some wooden stairs into what had probably once been a hay loft. It had a stack of wicker baskets at one end, one of which was open, showing a jumble of coloured materials inside. There was a table near the window with a sewing machine on it, and a pile of sewing, and on a shelf were rows of headdresses on stands, top hats, helmets, medieval headdresses with horns and veils, three-cornered hats, and at the far end… a black, high-pointed hat of furry, beaver felt! ‘Now sit down and tell us all about it,’ said Molly.

Cheered by her kindness and the nearness of the hat, Rosemary sat down on a dress basket and told them the whole story.

‘So you see,’ she ended up, ‘we simply must have the witch’s hat or we can’t do anything.’

‘But look here,’ said the young man when she had done, ‘of course you tell it awfully well, but you can’t come here with a fairy tale like that and expect me to hand over the hat on a plate! It’s a very rare thing, I don’t mind telling you. It must be very old. I’ve half a mind to take it to Fairfax Museum and see what they think of it.’

Rosemary was aghast.‘Oh, don’t do that. They might put it in a glass case, and we should never get it then.’

‘You certainly wouldn’t,’ said the young man shortly.

‘But we only want to borrow it, you know.’

‘Now look here…’ began the young man crossly, when Molly interrupted.

‘No, Bill, leave it to me. Tomorrow morning we are going off on tour. Bill and I, and some others, of course, act plays. We go round to village halls and schools and things, and we must have the hat to take with us. There isn’t time to get another, let alone make one. You see that, don’t you?’ Rosemary and John nodded.

‘Now suppose you wait until you have got the cauldron, and all this Silent Magic taped, and perhaps we might lend it to you then, just for the final spell. What about that for a solution?’

‘Oh thank you!’ said Rosemary gratefully. ‘You are kind! We shan’t forget, shall we, John? And you will take great care of the hat, won’t you?’

‘Great care. I promise. Perhaps you could come and see us act. Bill, give them a handbill. That will show you where we are going to be.’

‘Then we shall know where to find you when we are ready to borrow the hat,’ said John.

‘So you will,when you are ready,’ said the young man.

‘Thank you very much. But I think we ought to go now; Jeffries will be waiting.’

So they all shook hands, and Molly and the young man saw them to the car, where a slightly anxious Jeffries was waiting for them. They had been a good deal longer than half-an-hour.

14

Making Plans

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John and Rosemary reached Tussocks in time for tea. Mrs Pendlebury Parker was out, so they asked if they might have theirs on two trays so that they could take them where they liked in the garden.

‘Let’s have it on the stone seat,’ said Rosemary.

It had been a hot, sunny day, and the seat was warm to sit on. There were fat cushions of moss and little plants growing between the paving stones at their feet, and the yellow roses above dropped slow petals on to their tea-trays.

‘I feel like a princess,’ said Rosemary.

‘You don’t look like one. You’ve lost one of your hair ribbons.’

‘Bother!’ said Rosemary. ‘You know, I think this afternoon was pretty satisfactory. The Occupier man, I mean. And I liked Molly, too. They promised to take care of the hat, and now we know from the handbill exactly where they are going to be, so that all we’ve got to do is to write and ask them for it when we are ready. You can have the rest of my cucumber sandwiches. I like the scrunch when you bite them, but I don’t like the taste much.’

‘I hope it’s all right, about the hat, I mean,’ said John doubtfully. ‘The trouble is you never can tell with grownups. You know how they say “Not today, dear, another time!” when you know perfectly well that that’s simply a polite way of saying “No, you jolly well can’t!”’

‘Oh dear, I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Rosemary. ‘All the same, it would be best to do as Molly suggested. I mean get the cauldron and the Silent Magic ready first, and then try again for the hat.’

John nodded. His mouth was too full to speak. Presently he said,‘I say, we’ve got an awful lot to do. It will be hard enough to find the witch, let alone get her to tell us the spell.’

Remembering the strange old woman, Rosemary wriggled uneasily.‘I know. You wait till you meet her!’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking. We can’t get on with anything much unless we can get more time on our own. I tell you what I’ll do. Mummy said she was going to ring up Aunt Amabel tonight, and she is sure to talk to me, too. I’ll tell her about you…’

‘Not about the magic,’ interrupted Rosemary. ‘I don’t think it is wise to talk about that unless we’ve got to. The Occupier went all queer and cautious when he saw we really meant it – about the magic, I mean. And he was so nice before that. Didn’t you notice?’

John nodded.‘I won’t say anything about magic, only you. We’re allowed to do pretty well what we like at home during the holidays… if there are two of us. I can say we want to explore the old town, go to Fairfax Museum, and the cathedral and things like that, and she will speak to Aunt Amabel about it.Aunt Amabel thinks you are a “quaint, ladylike little thing”. I heard her say so. Of course,’ he went on reassuringly, ‘I know you aren’t anything of the kind, but she meant it as a compliment, so I expect it will be all right.’

The sky had clouded over, and great drops of rain were beginning to fall as well as rose petals. So they picked up their trays and ran indoors.

‘It was nice of John to come and thank me for letting him come to dinner,’ said Mrs Brown on the way home in the bus. ‘It quite cheered up my curtain making.’

‘Poor Mummy! Is it being horribly dull, the curtain making and sides to middling? It doesn’t seem fair when I’m having such a gorgeous time!’

Her mother laughed.‘Then I don’t mind a bit. I’m glad you are enjoying it, darling. I was afraid they were going to be such dull holidays for you. Mrs Pendlebury Parker wants you to play with John every day it can be managed. Will you like that?’

‘I shall love it!’ said Rosemary.

She had no opportunity of talking to Carbonel until she went to bed that night.

‘Well, I suppose you’ve learnt something,’ he said rather grudgingly, when she had told him all about the day’s adventures, ‘even if it’s only when to hold your tongue with human grownups. Still, to be fair, the temptation to say the Summoning Words and produceme must have been overpowering,’ he added complacently.

He was washing the difficult part under his chin as he sat beside her on the bed, and broke off to say:

‘On the whole you managed quite creditably.’ He transferred his attention to his right hind leg, and went on between licks:

‘I put in a little social time with Mrs Walker. I must say I like her taste in hearth rugs – very cosy. I collected some more talk about the Alley Cats. Heartrending, it is, the damage they are doing. Even the Humans are noticing. The tabby next door has got a torn ear and the grey at the tobacconist’s has been taken to the Vet. Now, if you and John can get about a bit on your own, Broom and I can go with you, and then we really shall begin to get somewhere.’

Rosemary swallowed her annoyance at his patronizing tone.

‘I suppose it is hateful for you, Carbonel. I mean, being “minion of the twiggy broom”, and me!’

‘Somehow it’s harder to be so near my liberty than it was when I was with HER, and there seemed no hope of release. It might be much worse, I keep telling myself. You are kind, and really quite intelligent for a human, and you stroke very well indeed.’ He was purring now, deep, slow, regular purrs. ‘So you must not mind if I’m a bit sharp now and then.’

In answer, Rosemary lifted him bodily into her lap. She was sitting cross-legged on her bed, and he settled into the hollow of her nightdress like water into a bowl. His yellow eyes were the merest slits of gold. For a while she sat in the dusk listening to the diminishing purr, then she said softly:

‘Dear Carbonel! We will get you free as soon as ever we can.’

There was no reply. The purr had faded into silence. Carbonel was asleep.

15

Where is the Cauldron?

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It was two days later before they were actually able to set out together on their own. They each had an extra shilling and a packet of sandwiches which the cook at Tussocks had made up for them. Rosemary carried the broom, and Carbonel trotted in front with his tail erect.

‘We’ve got hours and hours!’ said John happily. ‘How glorious! All the same, don’t let’s waste time by walking to the Market. Let’s go by bus.’

Business people had already gone to their offices, and only a few shopping ladies were out so early, so they had the front seat and the top of the bus to themselves. They swayed and rocked through the narrow streets, as John said, like a galleon in a stormy sea. They were so busy sailing the Spanish Main with sailors dying of scurvy like flies round them, that they reached the terminus before they knew where they were. They had agreed that the best thing to do was to go and find the friendly old man who had seen Mrs Cantrip selling her things, and ask him if he remembered who had bought the cauldron. But as they had told Mrs Pendlebury Parker that they would go and see the Museum, it seemed wisest to go there first and‘get it over’, as John said, rather as if it was a visit to the dentist.

The Museum was a large house which overlooked the Market. It was very old, and full of unexpected corners, and the floors ran up and down in a pleasantly disconcerting way. Although she did not like to say so for fear of sounding priggish, Rosemary rather liked looking at museums. But in spite of himself, John found he was getting really interested. There were suits of armour, and swords and halberds and ancient pistols with beautifully inlaid handles. There was a sedan chair with a window that let up and down like a window in a railway carriage, there was a very large glove that had belonged to Queen Elizabeth I which was embroidered all over with flowers and animals, and some early Victorian dresses that Rosemary would have loved to dress up in, and a case of battered dolls that bore all the marks of having been well and truly played with.

‘I always think that things that were meant to be used look rather sad all shut up in a museum, just to be looked at,’ said Rosemary.

They were passing through a long room that had been built on at the back to house the Wilkinson Collection of china, which the attendant told them was one of the finest in the country.‘Just look at all these teasets! It must be horrid for them never to be poured out of for people to have nice cosy tea-parties.’

‘Pooh! Dull, old grownup talk!’ said John. ‘I think we have seen most of the museum now, so let’s go to the Market.’

Rosemary would like to have stayed longer, but she followed John out into the sunshine with a feeling of relief that they need no longer talk in whispers. Carbonel was sunning himself on the steps outside with the broom propped up in a corner beside him. Rosie led the way to the friendly old man. When they reached the stall, a fat woman was haggling over some linoleum. When she had gone off with a large roll of it under her arm, the old man noticed Rosemary.

‘Hallo, Susie,’ he said. ‘Them fairy wands still ain’t come in. I’m expecting a couple of gross any day now!’ And he laughed wheezily at his own joke.

Rosemary laughed politely, too. If she could get him to go on treating it as a joke she could go straight to the point.

‘It’s not a fairy wand I want this time. It’s a witch’s cauldron.’

‘A cauldron, eh? Well, you could cook up a tidy spell in that fish-kettle over there!’ And he went off into a fit of wheezing that quite alarmed Rosemary.

‘Oh, but it must be one of those black things with a handle over the top. That’s what witches always use.’

‘There’s not much call for them these days,’ said the old man, dropping into his professional manner once more, ‘not since people ’ave begun to go in for these newfangled grates, and gas and electricity. The only coalscuttles they want are the kind you just tip the coals on with so as notto dirty yer ’ands. Now where did I see one of those things lately? Now wasn’t it you I was telling about the old party that set up next to me and sold ’er ’at? Well, believe it or not, she’d got one of them old coalscuttles, too.’

‘Did she sell it?’ asked Rosemary cautiously.

‘Must ’ave,’ said the old man. ‘I don’t think I saw ’oo to, because I was busy with a customer over ’alf a dozen spoons. Stop a bit, though… I remember, now, seeing a stout party walking away with it.’

‘I remember you saying you could read people’s clothes like a book, being in the trade, you said.’

The old man’s eye lit up.

‘A regular Sherlock ’Olmes, that’s me! Artistic that one was. I remember I says to myself, “’andwoven, good but baggy, skirt and jacket twenty-five bob.” She’d got grey ’air done in them buns that flap over ’er ears. It’s a funny thing, I’ve got it into my ’ead she said she kept a shop. Must ’ave said something about it, I reckon, but I can’t recall what.’

‘What could she have wanted the cauldron for?’ asked John.

‘You never know with that sort,’ said the old man darkly. ‘Not without it was for coal.’ And he turned his attention to a sad-looking young man who wanted to buy some gramophone records.

The children wandered off and sat down on an old packing case.

‘Now the thing is,’ said John, ‘what kind of shop would an artistic sort of grey-haired lady run?’

‘There are quite a lot of shops near the Cathedral that sell hand-made things and souvenirs,’ said Rosemary. ‘They are mostly kept by people like that.’

‘I believe you are right,’ said Carbonel. ‘The Cathedral is not far.’

‘I vote we eat our sandwiches in the grassy part round it, then we shouldn’t have to lug them about with us,’ said John. ‘Isn’t it funny how food seems to stop being heavy once it’s inside you? I suppose it’s something to do with balance.’

They walked to the Cathedral and sat on a seat outside with the sun casting the shadow of the great golden-grey building across the green grass, and the rooks cawing and circling overhead. The Cathedral clock over the west door struck eleven. It was a fascinating clock, with two fat little angels standing on either side with hammers, with which they beat the hours and the quarters on a bell. By the time the angels had struck the half-hour John and Rosemary had eaten their sausage rolls and scrambled egg sandwiches. Carbonel had one filled with anchovy paste which Rosemary had brought specially for him. By the time the angels had struck twelve the children had finished their pieces of cake and a bag of fat red gooseberries. Carbonel was pacing impatiently up and down, to the annoyance of the sparrows, who watched with eager eyes the crumbs that Rosemary shook from her lap.

‘What a fuss humans have to make over everything,’ the cat said scornfully as they collected the sandwich papers and turned to look for a rubbish basket. ‘We don’t go picking up our fishbones when we’ve eaten the fish. We just eat the bones as well. Tidy and economical.’

‘Well, I’m blowed if I’m going to eat all this grease-proof paper,’ said John. ‘Come on, let’s try all the artistic-looking shops at the top of the High Street in turn.’

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They walked to the Cathedral and sat on a seat.

There certainly were at least six likely shops which had arisen like cream to the top of the highway, where it widened in front of the Cathedral.

‘Now wait a minute,’ said John. ‘What are we going to say when we get inside? We can’t go blinding in and just demand to see their coal scuttles.’

‘I tell you what,’ said Rosemary. ‘Let’s take it in turns to engage the people in conversation, like they do in books, and find out what sort of fires they have. You don’t want coal scuttles if you have gas or electric fires.’

‘You are not an unintelligent child,’ said Carbonel. Rosemary blushed with pleasure. He went on, ‘I will listen carefully, and if they say “Coal”, go on engaging them in conversation and I will slip round the counter and see if I can spot the cauldron anywhere about.’

‘All right,’ said Rosemary. ‘Bags I the first shop, because I thought of it!’

The shop at the end of the little terrace which faced the Cathedral was called‘The Bijouterie’. The window was full of brooches made of fishbones, and boxes and ash-trays ornamented with barbola. There was a big pot of dried poppy heads enamelled red and blue. Rosemary went inside before she had really thought how you ‘engage people in conversation’. Characters in books never explain how this is done – they seem to be born knowing how to do it. The woman behind the counter said briskly, ‘Yes, dear, what do you want?’

She was a thin person in an embroidered peasant blouse, with her hair cut in a fringe. Rosemary’s mind went quite blank. She stood stupidly just looking, while she thought of something to say. Only at a hissed ‘Go on!’ from John, who was standing by the doorway with the broom, did she rouse herself. Pointing to a tray of postcards she gulped, ‘Please may I look at these?’

‘Sixpence each,’ said the woman. ‘They are done by a local artist. So much nicer than a photo, I always think.’

Rosemary looked at them doubtfully. Sixpence seemed a lot of money to pay for a postcard, and the pictures were so fuzzy that it was difficult to tell what they were about. She looked at them in rather desperate silence. Finally she chose one that she did recognize as the Market Cross, and regretfully handed over sixpence. Carbonel rubbed himself against her bare legs. He could not talk to her, because she had not got the broom, but she knew quite well what he meant. Rosemary took a deep breath and said:

‘What lovely weather! Not… not at all the sort of day for sitting by the fire!’

The woman looked a little surprised but agreed politely, adding– as if she knew what they wanted to discover – ‘Leastways, not with gas the price it is. Though I must say I like a bit of fire in the evenings.’

Rosemary took the card and ran out of the shop, where John was waiting.

‘Gas!’ she said triumphantly, and showed John the postcard.

‘I thought we could send it to your sister. It’s not that way up, silly! It cost sixpence.’

‘Well, the artist shouldn’t have done it on a day when there was such a thick fog. I say, you did look funny when you just stood there gawping.’

‘Well, I found out, anyway. It’s your turn now.’

There was a great number of brass ornaments in the next shop– door knockers and nut crackers and ash trays and little bells made like ladies with crinoline skirts, and proverbs like ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’ done in poker work. John handed the broom over to Rosemary and marched in. A tall thin man was flicking a shelf full of china ornaments with a feather duster.

‘Can you tell me the price of those brass toasting forks, please?’ said John.

‘Ten and six,’ said the man, turning from his dusting.

‘Oh,’ said John. ‘The thing is that the uncle I have in mind is rather fussy about his toast. He might not like it made with a brass toasting fork. He always insists on a coal fire to make it by, because he says it tastes so much better.’

‘Well, I swear by electric,’ said the man. ‘We’ve got one of those things that shoots the toast out when it’s done.’

‘Don’t you ever make it by a coal fire?’

‘We haven’t got one in the house. My wife says they’re dirty. Though I must say they are more homey.’

‘Just what I think,’ said John. ‘Do you know, on the whole I think perhaps my uncle wouldn’t like his toast made with brass, so I won’t get the toasting fork. But thank you all the same,’ and John left the shop.

‘You see, it’s quite easy, really,’ he said cockily, ‘and I didn’t spend any money.’

‘Well, I don’t think you ought to have made up all that stuff about your uncle,’ said Rosemary.

‘I didn’t,’ said John virtuously. ‘I have got an uncle who is fussy about his toast. Go on. You had better do that embroidery shop at the corner, and if you must buy something, get photographs of the cathedral, they’re cheaper.’

But here they drew a blank. The woman in charge had several customers and refused to be engaged in conversation. The children persevered, going from one shop to another with varying success, and wherever they found someone who owned to having a coal fire Carbonel padded silently behind the counter. Once or twice he was shooed ignominiously out. Working their way down the High Street, they passed the Town Hall and the Cottage Hospital, right down to the railway station, where there were only offices and a few little shops that sold newspapers and tobacco. By this time they had inquired at eleven shops. It was well into the afternoon, and they felt tired, hot, and discouraged. Not a trace of the cauldron had they found.

‘I can’t go another step!’ said Rosemary. ‘It feels hours since we had our sandwiches. I tell you what. We passed a tea shop a little farther back where p’raps we could sit down and have ices. I’ve got sixpence of my shilling left, and threepence of my pocket money.’

John was only too willing, so they retraced their steps and went into the tea shop. It was called the Copper Kettle, and there was a beautifully polished kettle in the window flanked by plates of homemade cakes. Lunch had been cleared away, and a young woman in a chintz overall was laying tables for tea. The walls were panelled with what looked like oak, and it was cool and pleasant inside. The large strawberry ices slid like nectar down their thirsty throats. The children found that by putting the broom on the floor underneath the table, and slipping off a sandal each, so that their bare feet rested on the handle, they could both hear what Carbonel had to say at the same time. He sat under the table to be as inconspicuous as possible.

‘I’ve just thought of something awful!’ said Rosemary. ‘Suppose the artistic lady didn’t want to use the cauldron as a coalscuttle at all? Then it doesn’t matter what sort of fires all those people have, and our whole day has been wasted.’

‘Golly!’ said John, so appalled by this idea that he stopped with a spoon full of ice-cream halfway to his mouth. ‘You mean that they may be using the cauldron for… well, standing ferns… or bathing the baby?’

‘Not in the shops we went to,’ said Carbonel from under the table. ‘Most of them had a cat of some kind, and I took the precaution of getting into conversation in most places. Quite civil most of them were. One of ’em even gave me her saucer of milk which, considering that strawberry ice-cream doesn’t seem to be coming my way, is just as well.’ And if a cat could sniff, that is what Carbonel would have done.

‘But Carbonel, darling! Would you like ice-cream?’ asked Rosemary in distress.

‘Not a bit. But I should like to be asked,’ he said in an injured voice.

Rosemary held a dab of ice-cream under the table on her finger. Carbonel licked it off, but it made him sneeze.

‘We seem to have spent an awful lot of money,’ said John.

‘I didn’t seem able to engage people in conversation unless I bought something,’ said Rosemary. ‘Do you think your sister will like nine photographs of the cathedral?’ she asked anxiously.

‘The postage would cost one and sixpence, so I shall do them up in brown paper and send them for tuppence ha’-penny. She will probably think I’ve gone potty,’ he added gloomily, scraping the last drops of runny ice-cream from the edges of the dish. ‘Well, what on earth do we do now?’

16

The Cauldron

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There was a gloomy silence while they tried to think what would be the best thing to do. Rosemary was the first to speak.

‘Well, I think…’ she began. But she never said what she thought, because it was then it happened.

Shopping ladies with parcels were beginning to come in for an early tea, and the chintz-overalled waitress was hurrying past their table with a tray laden with tea things when she caught her foot against the broom, tottered for one horrifying moment and fell with a crash. The shopping ladies stopped talking and turned round. John and Rosemary jumped up and helped her to her feet. Rosie began to pick up the broken china, and tried to rescue the cakes and buttered toast that were lying forlornly in a lake of tea.

‘I’m so awfully sorry!’ said Rosemary in distress. ‘I do hope you did not hurt yourself? Do sit down for a minute.’

‘We will clear it all up,’ said John. ‘I’m afraid it was our fault.’

‘I should think it was!’ said the waitress crossly. ‘And I don’t know what Maggie will say to all this broken china! Why couldn’t you put your walking stick in the umbrella stand by the door?’ She rubbed her bruised shin as she spoke.

‘Look!’ whispered Rosemary to John. ‘Look over there!’

John turned and stared in the same direction as Rosemary. Peering anxiously round the door that led to the kitchen was a plump, elderly woman with hair plaited in two buns, one over each ear. She was wearing an apron, but under it was an obviously hand-woven jacket.

‘Are you all right, Florrie?’ she said anxiously, and then she saw the mess on the floor and gave a moan. ‘The china, Florrie. How could you!’

By this time the broken tea things had been collected on the tray.

‘Please sit down, ladies,’ she went on. ‘I will bring you more tea in a minute. Florrie, you had better get a cloth.’

‘Let me get it, because it was our fault,’ said Rosemary. ‘Don’t do that!’ she said to John, who had dug her rather hard in the ribs. But all that John said was, ‘Look at Carbonel!’

The black cat was standing near the door that led to the street, his tail straight up in the air and his back arched, kneading the matting with his front paws and making strange crooning noises in his throat.

‘What is the matter with him?’ asked Rosemary anxiously. But John was staring as fixedly as Carbonel.

‘Over there in the corner! The umbrella stand!’

In the corner by the door, holding two umbrellas and a walking stick, was a fat black pot with three legs, and a handle over the top.

‘It’s the witch’s cauldron, isn’t it?’ breathed Rosemary.

The cat was quiet now. He turned and stalked towards them with his head held high.

‘Of course it is,’ said John. ‘I’d know it anywhere, even got up like that!’

Its well-rounded sides gleamed with black lead, and the copper band round it had been polished till it glowed.

‘Besides,’ he went on, ‘there is the patch in the bottom where it began to leak. Well, what are we waiting for? You had better pick it up and get out while this to-do is going on.’

Rosemary was shocked.

‘We can’t just take it! That would be stealing. We must think of a plan for getting it honestly somehow. But first we must help to clear up. You collect the buttered toast that skidded over there, and I’ll go and fetch another cloth.’

She hurried through the door into the kitchen. The waitress passed her coming out with a dustpan and brush, and only the one she had referred to as Maggie was there. She looked up as Rosemary came in.

‘Go away, little girl. As if you had not done enough damage for today!’

‘I know,’ said Rosemary penitently. ‘It’s because I’m so sorry about it that I thought I’d come and get a cloth and help to clear up. I will polish the floor again when it’s dry if you will let me.’

‘It’s not the floor that matters, it’s the china.’

There was a quiver in the woman’s voice, and to Rosemary’s horror her round face suddenly crumpled and she began to cry.

‘Oh, don’t!’ said Rosemary. ‘Don’t cry, please! Whatever is the matter? Do tell me, and then I’m sure it will make you feel better. I’ve got a clean hankie somewhere, I know I have.’

The woman did not take the handkerchief, but she stopped crying and wiped her eyes with her own.

‘It’s the china,’ she said jerkily, as she dabbed at her face. ‘The girls we have hired to wash up broke so much that we decided to try and manage without them, and besides that we couldn’t really afford to go on paying their wages. Business has been so bad lately. Florrie and I are on our feet all day, but it is no use. And because there were only the two of us we needed so much more china because the washing up was slower.’

‘But why don’t you buy some more?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Because we haven’t enough money, and neither of the china shops will give us any more credit. But I don’t know why I’m telling you all this!’ She gave a watery smile and dabbed at her face again with her handkerchief. ‘There is a big Women’s Institute rally this afternoon at the Temperance Hall, and I’d hoped for quite a lot of customers. The cakes are made all ready. But what is the use of customers if we have not enough china for them to eat off?’ Miss Maggie sniffed ominously again.

‘I see,’ said Rosemary slowly. ‘You mean that if you had more china, quite a lot of it, that you would earn a great deal of money this afternoon?’

‘I’d give anything I’ve got for some more china. You see, that’s not all.’

‘Oh dear. Is there some more?’ Miss Maggie nodded.

‘This afternoon my brother was coming to see how we are getting on. He put up the money for the tea shop in the first place, and if he sees that we’re busy he will probably help us out a bit, but if he thinks it is being a failure he’ll say it’s throwing good money after bad. Oh, well,’ she went on, ‘it’s no use bothering you with our troubles.’ And she turned heavily to the sink, looking so dejected that Rosemary said:

‘Oh, please cheer up. I might be able to help. About the china, I mean. But I must talk to my friends first.’

She ran out of the kitchen, to find John waiting impatiently for her.

‘What have you been doing all this time?’ he asked crossly.

‘Hush, I’ll tell you. Come outside, quickly!’

They hurried out and turned down a little passage that ran down the side of the shop.

‘Carbonel,’ said Rosemary. ‘Now we have got the cauldron, can it do some magic – grant wishes and things?’

Carbonel considered.‘It’s a bit irregular. You don’t belong to the Sinister Sisterhood, but the cauldron might do it to oblige me. But what for?’

Rosemary told them about the Women’s Institute rally, and the broken china, and the brother who was not going to throw good money after bad, and then she added:

‘… And Miss Maggie said that she would give everything she had got if she had enough china for this afternoon. So you see, if we could help I believe she would let us have the cauldron.’

Carbonel trotted off without a word.

17

The Wishing Magic

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In a few minutes Carbonel was back again, looking very pleased with himself.

‘It’s all right. I’ve persuaded it to do just one Wishing Magic to oblige. It’s a bit risky on account of the poor thing really being a bit past it, what with the Pot Mender, and so on. But it will do what it can.’

‘How exciting!’ said John. ‘What do we do?’

‘Well, wishing spells are Rainbow Magic. But, of course, you know that?’

John and Rosemary both shook their heads.‘You don’t? Good gracious! That’s how the story began that there is a pot of gold at the foot of the rainbow, simply because gold is what so many people wish for. The whole tale is just superstition, but that is how it started. Well, of course we must make a Rainbow Brew. Can you do that, do you think?’

Again Rosemary shook her head.‘But I’ll do anything you tell me to!’

‘I can’t think what they teach you at school,’ said the cat severely. ‘Every Witch’s Kitten knows how to do that. You mix seven liquids of the seven colours of the rainbow. It doesn’t much matter what, so long as the colours are right. That is why they let the kittens do it. And then, when it’s nicely simmering, you say the Wishing Words… if only I can remember them. I’ve heard HER say them often enough.’

Carbonel sat down with his tail neatly curled round his paws and closed his eyes.

‘Oh, don’t go to sleep now,’ said John, dancing with impatience. The cat opened his eyes very wide.

‘Who’s going to sleep? Do you imagine that every time a cat closes its eyes that it is sleeping? That’s when we think our deepest thoughts. Besides, how else can I concentrate, with you jigging up and down like a bobbin on a string? I think I can remember the Words all right. Now where can wedo it? We can’t do even the most elementary magic in the middle of the High Street in comfort.’

‘When I was in the kitchen, I think I saw a sort of wash house place across the yard outside the window. Would that do?’ asked Rosemary. ‘I expect this passage leads into the yard.’

They went to look, and sure enough, there were some neglected-looking out-buildings.

‘I’ll go and get the cauldron,’ said John. ‘I hope to goodness no one sees me. Lucky thing it’s just by the door. Rosie, you had better go and buy the rainbow things. I don’t think I should be much good at that. We must keep our fares home, but you had better take the rest of my money.’

‘What colours must I get?’ asked Rosemary.

‘The colours of the rainbow, of course,’ said Carbonel. ‘Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Meet us in the wash house as soon as you can.’ And he and John hurried down the passage.

They found that the wash house was a derelict building, with the sky showing through the slates here and there. There was a broken chair and some odd pots and pans and a copper in one corner. Beneath the small-paned window was an old sink with a tap and, better still, on the draining board was an ancient gas ring attached to a snake-like pipe.

‘We’re in luck, my boy!’ said Carbonel. ‘Every modern convenience. The thing is, have you got any matches?’

John went rather red, because he was not supposed to carry matches about, and he had to admit that he had one of those cardboard books. It had a portrait of a famous cricketer on the flap. He had meant to tear off the portrait and leave the matches behind, but somehow he had not.

‘See if the tap works!’ said Carbonel.

It worked all right. In fact, water spurted out of all sorts of unexpected places when it was turned on. They stood the gas ring on the sink, among the dust and bits of plaster, and put the half-filled cauldron over it. Then they lit the gas. It made an alarming‘pop’, but by the time a breathless Rosemary had returned with a large paper bag the water was beginning to boil.

‘I’ve got them!’ she said triumphantly. ‘I hope they will do!’ and she tipped the things out into the sink. ‘I’ve got lemonade powder for yellow, a packet of orange dye, a blue bag, a little bottle of green setting lotion (I got that cheap because the cap is cracked), some methylated spirits, and a bottle of indigo ink. I couldn’t get all packets of dye because I hadn’t enough money. Oh, and the woman in the shop let me have a pennyworth of hundreds and thousands. I thought we could add those as a sort of “thank you” to the cauldron.’

‘That is just the sort of attention it will appreciate,’ said Carbonel as he counted over the colours. ‘Wait a minute, though. You have not got anything red.’

Rosemary’s face fell. ‘Oh dear! I’ve only got three ha’-pence left and it’s getting so late! What shall I do?’

‘I know,’ said John. ‘Nip into the kitchen and warn Miss Maggie about the china coming, and see if there is anything red there. It isn’t stealing, really, because it’s for them.’

Rosemary hurried to the kitchen where Miss Maggie was arranging the half-dozen tea sets that were left. She was still sniffing slightly.

‘It’s all right, please cheer up! Because I think we can find you some china, as a lend, you know, for the afternoon. And then you will be able to make a lot of money with all the Women’s Instituters, and your brother will be frightfully impressed!’

Miss Maggie gave a wan smile.‘You are a kind little thing, but whoever would lend us enough china? And besides, it is half past three already!’

‘Goodness!’ said Rosemary, ‘we must hurry up. But I am almost sure we can do it, so do have a whole lot of cakes ready!’

Miss Maggie shook her head despondently, but as she turned to lift a tin from its shelf, Rosemary snatched something from the table and dashed back to the wash house with her pigtails flapping excitedly.

‘I’ve got it, something red! A bottle of cochineal!’

The other things were already in the cauldron which Carbonel was stirring with a rung from the broken chair.

‘It’s making a lovely magic sort of smell already,’ said John, peering gingerly into the cauldron. ‘I suppose it’s the setting lotion and the methylated spirits.’

Carbonel stopped stirring, and the swirling mixture subsided into a slow simmer which made a rhythmical‘plopping’ noise. ‘It’s about ready. Now the minute that you pour in the last thing, that’s the red stuff, repeat what I say and then add what your wish is… in rhyme if you can do it, and mind you say exactly what you mean this time!’

Rosemary nodded, breathing rather hard. She had already thought out a rhyme. This time she was determined there should be no mistake. She took a deep breath.‘I’m ready. Shall I pour in the cochineal?’

Carbonel nodded. Silently they watched while she tipped the little bottle until it was quite empty, and as the last drop fell the cauldron began to bubble furiously, seething and frothing, until a pile of rainbow-coloured bubbles rose up from the mouth.

‘Say after me!’ whispered Carbonel:

Prism,

Schism,

Solecism.

Spectrum,

Plectrum,

Bright electrum.

Knelling,

Belling,

Wishing spelling!

And as Rosemary repeated the last word the bubbles subsided, and an urgent boiling took their place.

‘Now!’ hissed Carbonel. ‘Say your wish!’

Rosemary stood up very straight and said:

Listen to my wishing rhyme,

Please bring here till closing time,

All the china you can find,

Of every sort and shape and kind

From the Wilkinson Bequest,

And John and I will do the rest!

With a hiss and a cloud of steam that seemed to fill the wash house, the cauldron boiled over and put out the gas. For a moment they could see nothing but a fog of steam, but as it cleared they realized that something had happened.

‘Good old cauldron, it’s done it!’ said John. And it had. The sink, the floor, the draining board, the window ledge, every shelf and corner was covered with china, rare and exquisite china, Spode china, Rockingham china, Dresden china, Chelsea china, dinner sets, banqueting sets, tea sets, jugs, ornaments, statuettes, vases. In fact it was exactly what Rosemary had asked for – all the china from the Wilkinson Bequest out of the Fairfax Museum.

‘Gosh!’ said John. ‘You’ve overdone it a bit, haven’t you? I mean to say, all these banqueting sets…?’

‘I have a bit,’ said Rosemary as she rescued a priceless Georgian footbath from slipping off the broken chair. ‘I really meant teasets, but if it all goes back at closing time it won’t really matter,’ and she darted off to the kitchen.

‘Miss Maggie, Miss Maggie!’ she called. ‘Do come! We’ve done it! Heaps and heaps of china in the wash house, do come and see!’ and she took the astonished Miss Maggie by the hand and ran with her across the yard. The china was still there. John was already sorting out the teasets from therest. Miss Maggie’s eyes were like saucers.

‘But where did it come from? I did not hear it arrive. Why, it is exquisite, beautiful china! It’s far too good.’

‘Oh, never mind!’ said Rosemary, who was jumping up and down with impatience. ‘It is yours until closing time. Do think of your brother’s good money after bad and the Women’s Instituters. They’ll be here any minute now!’

Miss Maggie took a deep breath. Then she said in an entirely different voice,‘Florrie, go and fetch all the trays you can lay hands on, and put all the kettles on to boil, and then run round to Osbornes and buy up all the buns and scones they’ve got. We shall be able to pay them this evening!’

They collected all the china they could and staggered into the kitchen. The meeting at the Temperance Hall was clearly over. In the tea shop there was not an empty seat.

‘Oh dear!’ said Miss Florrie. ‘They are getting impatient. I know all the signs.’

‘Never mind, we’ll help all we can,’ said John, ‘if you will tell us what to do.’

‘Will you put all the tea pots on the rack above the stove to warm, and the little girl could arrange the tea trays on the big table, and I will go and take some orders.’

Goodness, how they worked! First they carried trays in, and then they collected dirty china and brought it back to wash up, and as fast as one customer got up to go another would take her place. And the Women’s Institute ladies ate cream buns and crumpets off plates of priceless porcelain, and they drank thick, teashop tea from tea pots made for a Chinese Emperor when our ancestors were running about in woad.

John and Rosemary stood over the sink washing-up until they thought their backs would break.

‘We’ve jolly well earned that old cauldron!’ said John, wiping his crimson face. ‘Did you see that when the brother came there was a queue outside the shop waiting to come in?’

‘I know,’ said Rosemary, ‘isn’t it splendid! He said that as they were so busy he would come back and talk to them after six.’

She stood up and pushed back her plaits for the fiftieth time.

‘Talking of closing time,’ said John, ‘if we are not back in Tottenham Grove by six when Jeffries comes to fetch me, Aunt Amabel will be cross, and then she may not let us go off on our own again.’

Miss Maggie came in with a loaded tray which she put down on the table.

‘Whew!’ she said. ‘It is slackening off now. I’ve never known such a day!’

‘Isn’t it splendid!’ said Rosemary. ‘But John and I think we ought to be going home now.’

‘My dear child, I simply don’t know how to thank you both. Goodness knows why you have done all you have. Where shall I return all this beautiful china? I should so like to thank the kind owner who lent it so generously. He must be rather an eccentric person.’

‘You really can’t thank him… it is… I mean he is very shy and retiring. And don’t bother about returning the china. It will… I mean, transport has been arranged!’

‘And it is quite easy to repay us,’ said John, who felt that in her efforts to explain things truthfully Rosemary was rather losing sight of their real object.

‘My dears, anything I can do, you have only to say what you want!’

‘Then would you let us have the cauldron that you use as an umbrella stand? As… as a sort of keepsake?’

‘Why, you funny little things, if that is really what you want! What an odd choice! I only paid five shillings for it in the market. Such an odd old woman I bought it from. And, of course, if you ever want tea or an ice-cream you will always be welcome at the Copper Kettle!’

John and Rosemary took off their aprons, fetched the broom and the cauldron, and said‘Goodbye’. They had had no time for any tea, so Miss Florrie put a large bag of cakes in the cauldron for them to eat in the bus.

‘Goodbye, Miss Maggie. Just put the china together… and it will be collected. Goodbye, Miss Florrie!’ and with yet another wave from the two sisters they set off down the High Street to the bus terminus, carrying the cauldron between them, and with Carbonel behind.

Rosemary gave a great sigh.‘Well, we’ve done it!’

‘So we have, but I never want to see a tea towel again!’ said John. ‘You got off pretty lightly!’ he said to the cat.

‘I did what I could,’ said Carbonel with dignity. ‘I washed up milk jugs until I was too full to lick so much as a teaspoon of cream.’

‘What an odd thing!’ said Mrs Brown that evening. She and Rosemary had finished their supper and she was reading a copy of the evening paper which she had bought on the way home. ‘Just listen to this!’

MUSEUM MYSTERY

While going on his usual rounds of the Fairfax Museum in the normal course of his duties, at 3.45 this afternoon, the attendant, Mr Arthur Pettigrew, discovered that the whole of the valuable Wilkinson Bequest China Collection had apparently been stolen. On being questioned, Mr Pettigrew said that when he left the room at 3.30 with a party of visitors everything was in its place. The police were at once informed. The theft was at first put down to a gang of thieves who have been at work in this neighbourhood, but the mystery deepened when it was discovered that all the glass cases were still locked, the keys never having left the possession of Mr Jones, the Curator. But on glancing into the room at closing time, Mr Pettigrew found that all the china had been returned, each piece being back in its right place. The theory that it was not a theft but a practical joke is strengthened by the fact that on several plates were signs of jam, and crumbs of cake and bread and butter, and that several teapots contained tea that was still quite warm.

‘Did you see the Wilkinson China when you and John were at the Museum this morning?’

Rosemary nodded.‘It was all there when we went to see it,’ she said quite truthfully.

18

Where is She?

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On the way home from the Copper Kettle, John and Rosemary had discussed their next move. They had got together the broom and the cauldron, and the hat, they felt, was theirs for the asking. The next thing to do was to find Mrs Cantrip and persuade her to tell them what was the Silent Magic which would free Carbonel finally and completely. It was not until three days later that they felt they could ask to go off on their own again; three days spent pleasantly enough playing in the garden at Tussocks. It was Carbonel who urged them to hurry. He grew daily more restless and, truth to tell, more cantankerous. Rosemary would sit at her window in the evenings and watch with renewed interest the cat world that trotted so purposefully along the garden walls and over the leads and slates beyond. She would stare at the chimneys and roofs, some sloping steeply, some with a gradual incline, with here and there a tower or steeple standing above them, until in the half light the harsh lines of slate and brick seemed to soften and undulate, like living hills and valleys. The evening smoke from the chimney-pots wreathed itself mysteriously round them. Carbonel would sit beside her on the window-ledge making strange cat noises in his throat until Rosemary went to bed, when he would slip silently away into the twilight on his own affairs.

On the fourth day after the adventure with the Wishing Magic, John came to fetch Rosemary and they set off with their sandwiches.

‘You know,’ said Rosemary as they made their way to the bus stop, ‘I have not bothered very much about the cat side of all this before. I have only been thinking of freeing Carbonel because he is such a darling.’

‘A pretty crotchety darling, if you ask me!’ said John.

‘But don’t you see, that is because he is so worried about everything? It must be dreadful for him to see his poor subjects being so badly treated. I shouldn’t be surprised if all great exiles were pretty snappy, people like Napoleon and Charles II, I mean; only that is not the sort of thing that gets into history books.’

Carbonel looked round. He had been stalking on ahead. Rosemary had thought him too far away to hear the conversation, but she was mistaken. However, he seemed not displeased at being compared to Napoleon and Charles II.

‘I suppose we are wise to go to the market again?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Well, it does seem to be the sort of place where things happen, doesn’t it?’ said John.

‘I believe we shall find HER there,’ said Garbonel. They had brought the broom with them so that he could talk to them. ‘As like as not she didn’t sell her broom until she had found the place where she wanted to settle. It stands to reason. Besides, catch her wasting money on shoe leather, when the broom would take her for nothing.’

They were later in setting off than before, and the streets were full of busy people. The expedition began badly. The sky was cold and grey so that they had had some difficulty in persuading Mrs Pendlebury Parker to let them go off for the day. There was a queue at the bus stop, and the conductor had a headache. Not that he told anyone about it, but it made him cross, so that when he saw Carbonel slipping up the stairs after the children, he called out:

‘Now then, no cats upstairs! What do you think this is, a blinking Noah’s Ark?’ and to the children’s indignation he picked up the outraged Carbonel by the scruff of his neck and dumped him on the pavement. There was no time for John and Rosemary to get off too, and as the bus gathered speed they saw the cat, looking the soul of indignation, left standing on the pavement.

There seemed nothing to do about it, but go on as they had arranged.

‘But without Carbonel I almost hope we don’t find Mrs Cantrip,’ said Rosemary uneasily.

‘Well, it doesn’t seem very likely that we shall, anyway, so I shouldn’t worry’ said John cheerfully. ‘We have absolutely no clue to go on. Besides, she is only an ordinary old woman now. You said she’d retired from being a witch.’

Rosemary said nothing. John was a matter-of-fact person and it was hard to describe anything so intangible as feelings to him.

‘I tell you what,’ said John when they had got off the bus, ‘why not say the Summoning Words? After all, it was Carbonel who wanted us to get on with things, so he couldn’t mind.’

‘I suppose I could. It is serious this time, not showing off.’

‘Of course it is serious. Besides, you are his mistress, after all.’

They found a quiet corner between two cars in the parking places beside the market, and Rosemary shut her eyes and said the Summoning Words:

By squeak of bat

And brown owl’s hoot,

By hellebore,

And mandrake root,

Come swift and silent

As the tomb,

Dark minion

Of the twiggy broom.

When Rosemary opened her eyes again she said,‘I forgot to ask you. Have you any sandwiches that he will like? Mine are only ham and hard boiled egg, and I know he won’t like those.’

They tore a corner of John’s packet and found that his were potted meat and jam.

‘Look here,’ said Rosemary. ‘We shall have to put in some time before Carbonel can possibly get here. Let’s go and buy him a tin of sardines. He will be frightfully hungry after walking all the way here. I think we can get a little tin for sevenpence. Let’s go to the grocery stalls.’

They set off walking slowly up and down the market. They meant quite honestly to be looking for sardines, but it was all so interesting that it was some time before they reached the aisle where most of the grocery stalls were to be found. They bought a little tin of sardines from a stall which was a jumble of all kinds of tinned foods which had a large placard over it which said SMASHING REDUCTIONS!A PENNY OFF THE SHILLING! So instead of paying sevenpence they got it for sixpence halfpenny. It was not till they had wandered to the end of the market that they realized that there was no key with it with which to open the tin.

‘What a swizzle!’ said John. ‘Let’s go back and ask for one.’

They went back, but the fat man in charge of the stall merely said:

‘Well, what do you expect for sixpence halfpenny? P’r’aps you’d like a knife and fork?’ and everybody laughed.

‘How cross people are today!’ sighed Rosemary.

‘A fat lot of use a tin is without an opener,’ said John. ‘The sight of a tin we can’t open will make Carbonel cross as well, and I shouldn’t blame him!’

‘I tell you what,’ said Rosemary. ‘Perhaps the second-hand man will have one he would let us borrow.’ So they went to see.

The old man saw them coming over the heads of several people. As soon as he caught sight of Rosemary he waved an imaginary fairy wand, pointed the toe of a battered boot, and did what he meant to be a fairy pirouette. Then he wheezed in a way that Rosemary recognized as a laugh and she laughed too, more because he was such a nice, friendly litde man, than because she thought it funny. The fairy wand business was becoming a regular joke.

‘They still ‘aven’t come in yet!’ he said between wheezes.

‘It isn’t a fairy wand we want today, it’s a sardine tin opener,’ said Rosemary gravely.

‘A sardine tin opener?’ he said, going off into a paroxysm of wheezes. ‘You’ll be the death of me!’ he said at last, wiping his eyes. But he rummaged about in an old box and brought out a key, very old and rusty, but nevertheless a key.

‘I don’t fancy sardines myself, but it takes all sorts to make a world. If it was sweets, now, it would be different. A regular sweet tooth I’ve got.’

Rosemary took the opener from him.‘Thank you very much indeed! How much is it?’

‘I’ll make you a present of it!’ said the old man gallantly, and turned away to attend to a customer.

It was precisely this minute that the two children became aware of Carbonel licking his dusty paws a few feet away. Far from being cross at having been summoned, he was most gracious.

‘I wondered if you would have enough sense to say the Words,’ he said. ‘Of course I was coming anyway, but the Words give one’s paws the power of coming the shortest way possible. I was following the bus route when they whipped me round and down an alley I had never noticed before. Got me here in half the time. Not a whole tin of sardines specially for me? Really, I feel quite touched! Believe me, I shall never forget it!’

And Carbonel rubbed himself against the children’s bare legs, winding in and out between them and purring, as John said, ‘Like a space ship.’

They found a couple of packing cases at the edge of the stalls and settled down to eat their sandwiches, while Carbonel, still purring, licked the sardine tin until even the smell of sardine had gone.

‘I tell you what I bags we do,’ said Rosemary, as she wiped the crumbs from her lap. ‘Let’s go and buy the old man a present. He has been so jolly kind and helpful. We shouldn’t have found either the hat or the cauldron without him, and now there is the opener.’

‘That’s a good idea. But whatever could we give him?’

‘He said he’d got a terribly sweet tooth,’ said Rosemary. ‘There is a sweet shop over there I went to once. Let’s go there and see what we can afford.’

She led the way to the little shop where she had weighed the merits of toffee apples and liquorice bootlaces on the day that she had first met Carbonel. What a long time ago it seemed now! When they reached the shop they were in deep discussion as to what happened to a sweet tooth if you had to have false ones, so that Rosemary did not notice anything different about the shop at first.

‘I don’t expect they can replace a sweet tooth,’ she was saying. ‘That is why old people don’t seem to like toffee. Besides…’

John interrupted,‘Is this the shop you mean? What a miserable place!’

It was indeed. There was no longer a cheerful display of jars of sweets, of pink coconut ice, and sticks of peppermint rock. Except for one or two jars of pallid toffee and some dusty odds and ends of stationery the window was empty. Rosemary looked with distaste at two dead blue-bottles which lay on their backs near some yellowing envelopes.‘I think this is it,’ she said doubtfully.

‘Well, p’r’aps that explains it,’ said John. And he pointed to a hand-printed notice which was stuck rather crookedly on to the window with stamp paper:

UNDER NEW MANGEMENT

it said in wobbly capital letters.

‘Well, I shouldn’t think the “new mangement” gets many customers!’

But as he spoke a young woman with a whimpering small boy opened the door with an angry jangle of the bell and went in.‘I say, look at that!’

Rosemary looked where he pointed excitedly.

Over the door was another notice which said KATIE CANTRIP. LICENSED TO SELL TOBACCO.

John whistled.‘Gome on!’ he said.

Rosemary began to say,‘Don’t go in till we’ve decided what to do…’ but it was too late. John had opened the door with a jangle of the bell that could not be ignored, and Carbonel had slipped in after him. There was nothing for Rosemary to do but follow down the two steps into the shop.

19

Mrs Cantrip

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It was dark inside the shop, and the old woman behind the counter was so busy with her customer that she paid no attention to the children. She was grinning and bobbing, but saying nothing to the young woman, who was talking very fast and angrily, while she held the small boy by the arm.

‘I tell you straight,’ she was saying. ‘It’s the third time ’e’s ’ad a stomach ache after eating your ’ome made sweets. Once I could ’ave understood, because ’e never was a child to know when to stop. But today ’e’d only sucked a couple, that I do know, when the poor little kid was doubled up. I’m not one to complain, neither, but you can take the rest of them back!’ And she threw the bag of sweets on the counter. The little boy howled anew, as much at the sight of his property bursting its bag and bouncing all over the floor, as at the pangs of stomach ache. The young woman gave him a shake.

‘And don’t you ever let me find you coming ’ere again!’ she said, and pulled him, still complaining, out of the shop.

The clanging of the bell died away and the children watched Mrs Cantrip as she scrabbled round the floor, picking up the sweets. As she put them back into the jar without so much as a dust, both John and Rosemary were doubtful about helping her to pick them up. However, it gave Rosemary a moment or two to notice that the old woman had made some attempt to tidy herself since the day she had sold the broom. Her grey hair was twisted into a wispy bun by means of several large hairpins that reminded John of staples. She wore a shawl over her shoulders edged with scarlet bobbles, some of them missing, and a grubby apron with a pattern of enormous pink flowers on it.

She peered short-sightedly over the counter and said to John, amiably enough:

‘What can I do for you, lovie?’

There was a pause while the cat and the two children instinctively drew nearer together. It was John who spoke first.

‘Are you Mrs Cantrip?’ he asked.

‘Katie Cantrip, that’s me,’ said the old woman. ‘Licensed to sell tobacco,’ she added with some pride.

‘Then, if you please, we want you to tell us the Silent Magic that will make Carbonel free for ever.’

The old woman stiffened, and the amiability drained from her face as completely as water drains from a sieve, leaving her sharp nose and chin looking sharper than ever. Her deep-set eyes snapped angrily.

‘Have you got that cat there?’ she asked harshly.

‘I’m here!’ said Garbonel, and he leapt up on to the counter.

Mrs Cantrip seemed to pull herself together.

‘Well, we’d better talk it over fair and square. Put the broom on the counter so that we can all hear His Highness Prince Carbonel talking.’

Carbonel’s tail twitched at the very end where it hung down from the counter, otherwise he might not have noticed the mock deference with which she gave him his full title.

‘Do as SHE says,’ he said, without taking his great golden eyes off her. ‘But don’t leave the broom unguarded for an instant. Goodness knows what she might get up to.’

So they put the broom longwise down the counter, with the twigs still wrapped in Rosemary’s shoe bag, and John held it one end, and Rosemary held it the other, and from the other side of the counter Mrs Cantrip laid her gnarled hand on the middle. But as she stroked the wooden handle the children felt the broom quiver in response.

‘Ah, my beauty!’ said the old woman, so softly that Rosemary was startled. ‘We had some fine times together, you and me! Do you remember swooping over the North Pole with the Northern Lights flickering through your tail? And beating back home against a north-east gale with the clouds scuddingover the moon so thick and dark that many a broom would have lost its way? But not you, my beauty! Ah, you were as fine a besom as ever took the sky, but now you are old, and so am I, and the glory is gone from us.’ She stroked the broom and cruddled over it like a woman with a sick child. Rosemary seized on her softened mood. ‘But why won’t you set Carbonel free?’

At the mention of the cat the softened mood was over.

‘Why should I set him free? I always hated him, else why should I have gone to the trouble of binding him with a second Magic?’

‘Why do you hate me?’ asked Carbonel. His tail was still now, but his eyes never left the old woman’s face. ‘I worked well for you.’

‘Oh, yes, you did your work,’ said Mrs Cantrip bitterly, ‘but only because you had to. I never tamed your proud spirit. However powerful the magic I made, you were always there with your air of disdain and disapproval as though you were the master and I the servant. And just as much as you withheld your will, my spells were that much short of perfection.’

‘Your own pride was responsible for that. If you had been content to have a common cat for your accomplice you would have had your way. But you chose a Royal Cat.’

‘That is all over now,’ said Rosemary. ‘Can’t you forget it, and tell us the Silent Magic so that we can set him free?’

‘I shall never tell you, you may be sure of that. If you want to know, you must find it out for yourselves. Besides, it is a Silent Magic so no one can say it. It was written down, and I have burnt my books, haven’t I?’

‘Have you?’ asked Carbonel sweetly. ‘I doubt if it was only sugar and water that goes into these sweets of yours that give the children such stomach ache!’

John and Rosemary looked at the rows of jars on the shelves behind her, and in each one the sweets glowed very faintly, red and green and yellow, in a way that they had certainly never seen before in a sweet shop.

‘Well, what of it?’ said Mrs Cantrip sullenly. ‘It was only a very little magic I mixed with them to make ’em go farther. It didn’t do any real harm. A bit of stomach ache is good for children. Teaches ’em self control.’

Her eyes wavered beneath Carbonel’s unwinking stare.

‘Then if you are still doing magic, you didn’t burn all your books!’

‘I did burn them,’ said Mrs Cantrip angrily. ‘Well, all of them except one,’ she admitted.

‘Where is it?’ said John and Rosemary together.

‘That I’ll never tell you!’ said the old woman fiercely. But as she spoke the shop door burst open, and half a dozen people came tumbling in. Now the shop was so small that it could only hold four people with comfort, so that when six people squeezed in, in addition to John and Rosemary, and those people angry and gesticulating, there was barely room to move. Above the hubbub a brawny man who seemed to head the company shouted:

‘Are you Mrs Cantrip?’

‘That’s me. I’m Katie Cantrip, licensed to sell tobacco.’

‘Well, why don’t you sell tobacco instead of this rubbish? ‘Ere, this is what you sold me, see!’ and he thrust a handful of evil-smelling brown stuff under her long nose.

‘So I did!’ said the old woman blandly. ‘That’s tobacco all right. I ought to know, because I grew it myself in my own back yard,’ she added with pride.

‘You what…?’ roared the man.

‘Yes, and what is this rubbish you sold me instead of notepaper!’ said a shrill voice behind him. ‘Superfine Azure Bond is what I paid for, and nothing but dead leaves when I got home. I’ll have the law on you!’ But her shrill protests were drowned by further complaints.

‘Made my Tommy sick, her sweets did!’

‘And my Lucy!’

‘It ought not to be allowed!’

‘Who does she think she is?’

‘Give us our money back, missus!’

Fists were shaken and threats were thick in the air. John said to Mrs Cantrip:

‘You had better give them back their money, or I think there will be trouble.’

‘How can I? I haven’t got any,’ said the old woman. ‘But if you was to let me have the broom back I could be over their heads in a winking!’ she said craftily.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Carbonel.

She peered uneasily from side to side at the angry people, and Rosemary felt quite sorry for the old woman.

‘We can’t give you the broom, but we will help you, won’t we?’

John nodded.‘Take her into the room at the back. And Carbonel had better go with you to see fair play. Give me all the money you’ve got. It’s lucky Daddy sent me five shillings this morning. Hurry up!’

Mrs Cantrip ran uncertainly to the end of the counter, hesitated and turned back and went with Rosemary with Carbonel close on her heels. Their disappearance raised a fresh shower of angry cries from the defrauded customers, so to make himself heard John climbed on to a chair.

‘Ladies and gentlemen!’ he shouted. ‘Ladies and gentlemen! If you will jolly well be quiet for a minute, on behalf of Mrs Cantrip, I will give you your money back, if I can,’ and turning to the angry man he said, ‘What do you want?’

‘My tobacco or my money. That’s fair, isn’t it? I paid three and sixpence for this rubbish!’

Even from where he was standing on the chair John noticed an extraordinary smell coming from the torn packet. He counted out three and sixpence (there was three halfpence in the cash drawer, and a safety pin). This made a very large hole in their total of six and threepence. However, the brawny man seemed satisfied and, muttering something about‘the police next time’, elbowed his way out of the shop. With his departure the remaining customers seemed a little less aggressive. Under the counter was a cardboard box of stationery with the maker’s seal still unbroken, so that John was able to replace the notepaper and envelopes from this, feeling pretty certain that it would not turn into dry leaves on the way home, as the other had done. Luckily the sweets had only been sold for a few pence, so that when the last customer came for her money he was only tuppence short. She was a nice, motherly person, and when she saw John’s anxious face she said:

‘Don’t take on, dearie! It doesn’t matter about the tuppence, but don’t let your grannie do it again.’

John was so shocked at the idea of Mrs Cantrip being taken for his grandmother, that he quite forgot to say‘Thank you.’

When she had gone he locked the door and hung up the notice that said‘Closed’, and heaved a sigh of relief.

In a few minutes he rejoined Rosemary in the little room that opened off the shop. It was surprisingly tidy. There was very little furniture, but what there was was clean and orderly. Rosemary was making a cup of tea.

‘It looked all right in the packet,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think we had better drink any. It might turn us into something.’

‘Probably something creepy with a lot of legs,’ said John. Rosemary shuddered. Mrs Cantrip said nothing, but she took the cup that Rosemary poured out for her and blew on it gustily.

‘Well, I got rid of them!’ he said, and told them what had happened. ‘But I shouldn’t open the shop for a day or two until it has blown over,’ he said to Mrs Cantrip, who did not even look up from her tea.

‘Go away!’ she said sourly.

‘Well, of all the ungrateful people!’ began Rosemary. ‘When all we are doing is to try to help you!’

‘It’s no use!’ said Carbonel. ‘Sulking, that’s what she’s doing. Best leave her to get over it.’

‘Come on, Rosie,’ said John. ‘Let’s go!’

‘All right, I suppose we had better.’ She turned to Mrs Cantrip. ‘But we shall come back for the Silent Magic, make no mistake about that!’

Mrs Cantrip poured her tea into the saucer and drank it noisily, but still she said nothing. The children found a side door that opened on to an alley which led back to the Market Square.

‘Well, I do think she might have said “Thank you”, considering it cost us every penny we’ve got!’ said Rosemary indignantly. ‘And I think it was awfully brave of you to face all those angry people like that. All the same, I wish we hadn’t got to walk back.’

‘Oh well, things might be a good deal worse,’ said John.

‘Look here, I’ve got something to show you. Where can we go that’s quiet and private?’

‘What about the Cathedral where we had our sandwiches the other day?’

‘Good idea,’ said John.

20

The Book

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They set off for the Cathedral, John humming a tune to himself. Rosemary looked at him suspiciously. He seemed to mind remarkably little that they had no money left and had failed in their attempts to get Mrs Cantrip to tell them the Silent Magic.

‘You look awfully fat!’ she said. ‘What have you got inside your coat?’

‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ said John in an irritating voice.

‘Not particularly!’ said Rosemary untruthfully.

They walked in silence to the top of the High Street. It was a strain for Rosemary because it was rather a long way and she was bursting with curiosity. The rooks were cawing noisily in the tops of the swaying elm trees, and the fat little angels on either side of the clock were striking three o’clock as they made their way to the same seat as before.

‘Now then, do you want to see?’ said John. Luckily Carbonel said ‘Of course we do!’ which relieved Rosemary of the problem of how to say she did, and yet keep her dignity.

‘Well,’ said John. ‘When I had locked the door behind the nice woman, I was just going to follow you when I remembered that before you got Mrs Cantrip to go out of the room, she ran to the end of the counter, as though she was going to do something, and then thought better of it and turned back again. Well, Sherlock Holmes says that in any emergency women always rush to the thing that they value most. It’s a first class story, that, it’s the one where…’

‘Oh, never mind about Sherlock Holmes!’ interrupted Rosemary, her dignity forgotten. ‘Do go on!’

‘Well,’ said John again. He was evidently enjoying himself. ‘I went to the end of the counter, and all I could see were three little drawers underneath. One was empty except for a candle-end and a piece of string, the middle one was full of bills, and the third…’

‘Yes?’ breathed Rosemary.

John was unbuttoning his jacket. From inside he took out a battered, ancient-looking book. Only one of its powdery leather covers was there, and that hung by a single strand of thread. The pages were thick and yellow, and covered with cramped writing and curious diagrams in red and black ink.

Carbonel was standing with his front paws on John’s knee, with his ears pricked and his great eyes intent on the writing.

‘Oh, wise young human!’ he said. ‘Oh, Prince among Boys! Through your wisdom and perspicacity we have found the book of spells with the Silent Magic!’

For one pardonable minute Rosemary wrestled with a feeling of the unfairness of things. After all that she had done for Carbonel the highest praise she had been given was that she‘knew how to stroke’. But it was only for a minute. Even if she had known about Sherlock Holmes she had to admit that she would never have thought of applying what she had read to Mrs Cantrip.

‘I think you are the cleverest boy I know!’ she said, and she really meant it. John went quite pink at all this praise.

‘It wasn’t so bad,’ he said modestly. But Carbonel was oblivious of everything but the book. He was trying to turn the pages with his paw.

‘Every witch has a book like this. They’re handed down from one to another, and each one adds what new spells she has discovered.’

‘Like cookery recipes,’ said Rosemary.

‘This is the right book, sure enough. I’d know it anywhere, though of course SHE would never let me look inside it. Search about halfway through.’

John flipped over the pages at random.

‘What is this… “To ensure the blight on a neighbouring garden. Increase ingredients according to distance away required!”… hm. That’s not it. What’s this? “An infallible love potion…” Oh, who cares about love potions? Here, what is this? “A Silent Magic for the Use of…” Hi, Carbonel, look what you’ve done!’

As John began to read this last title the cat had said‘Hush!’ and in a desperate effort to cover the words with his paws had knocked the precious book off John’s knees on to the pavement.

‘Whatever did you do that for?’ asked John crossly.

‘Don’t you see?’ said Carbonel. ‘It is a Silent Magic, and if you say it aloud it is broken and spoilt!’

They picked up the book and dusted it carefully. It seemed none the worse. But nobody noticed that something had fallen from between the pages. They found the place again with some difficulty, and craning over John’s shoulder this is what Rosemary read:

‘SHE WHO WOULD UNDO A BINDING MAGIC must take the plait of Binding Plants which was twisted when the Magic was first made. This will probably be Dry as Tinder but no matter. Fill the Cauldron with Seven Pipkins of Puddle Water. When the water comes to the boil she must drop in the Plait of Weeds without delay and ride widdershins seven times round the Boiling Pot. This done, she must take the Binding Plants from the cauldron (these will now be found green and lush), and must untwist the Plait, being sure that she make no sound or complaint, though they tear her fingers. With the unbinding of the weeds the One bound will for ever be made free. The following words must be said Silently as the Plait is Unwound…’

‘Yes, but look here,’ said John. ‘Where on earth is this wretched plait?’

The three looked at each other blankly. For a minute they none of them said anything, but their thoughts were very much the same. It was too bad when the final piece of the puzzle seemed to be falling into place to find that, after all, they were as far as ever from completing it.

At last Rosemary spoke.‘We don’t seem to be any nearer the end than before,’ she said gloomily.

They sat in a row on the seat staring before them at the brilliant green of the grass, at the flagged path with here and there a fallen leaf, and at the sparrows that hopped with maddening cheerfulness round their feet. But they were none of them aware of what they were looking at. Rosemary, with her mind intent on where to find a seven-year-old plait of withered creepers, idly watched an old man in a green apron sweeping up the leaves and bits of paper that untidy people had dropped on the path. Somewhere near he had a bonfire; she could tell by the smell. He swept the rubbish into a little pile by the seat, and just as he bent down to load it into his wheelbarrow by scooping it up with two bits of board, she jumped up and pounced on the pile.

‘Oh, please don’t sweep it up!’ she said desperately. ‘You have got something valuable of ours here. I’m sure I saw you sweep it up!’

To the astonishment of John, Carbonel, and the old man, she began scrabbling frantically among the leaves and bits of paper and bus tickets. Suddenly she made a pounce.

‘I’ve got it!’ she said, and rose triumphantly to her feet. John was staring at her with his mouth open, and even Carbonel looked surprised.

‘Is she all right in the head?’ asked the gardener.

‘Of course I am!’ said Rosemary indignantly. ‘I say, I am awfully sorry I have messed up your path again, but I will sweep it up for you if you will lend me your broom.’

But, muttering that‘he didn’t know what children were coming to!’ the old man collected the rubbish together once more and trundled it away in his barrow, still muttering darkly to himself. Rosemary was too excited to notice what he did.

‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it!’ she said. ‘I remember that something fell out of the book when we dropped it. I thought vaguely it was a piece of paper, but I was so anxious to see the spell I never thought any more about it; and just as I was watching the rubbish being swept up, I suddenly thought what it must have been. Why, in a minute or two it would have been on the bonfire! Look here!’

In the palm of her hand lay a coil of roughly plaited twigs, dry and brittle as tinder. There was still a withered leaf attached to one of the strands, which might once have been ivy.

‘Mrs Cantrip must have pressed it in her magic book, like Mummy pressed a sweet pea from her wedding bouquet in her Bible…’ They turned over the thick pages of the book, and sure enough, between two plain pages at the end was a depression into which the plait exactly fitted.

‘You’re a wonder!’ said John. But Carbonel’s heart was so full that all he could do was to rub himself against Rosemary’s legs and purr and purr and purr. There was no need to say anything. It was her turn to go pink with pleasure.

‘There is only the hat to get now,’ said Rosemary, ‘and that will be easy’

‘I left the Players’ handbill in my other jacket pocket, but I’ll look it up the minute we get home,’ said John.

‘In two days’ time the moon will be full, and that will mean the next Lawgiving,’ said Carbonel. ‘If only I could be free by then, what bloodshed could I spare my people!’

‘Well, we’ll have a good try to get the hat tomorrow somehow,’ said John. ‘But look here, my jolly boys, as I used up every halfpenny we had between us on that ungrateful old Cantrip, we shall have to hoof it home.’

‘I tell you what,’ said Rosemary. ‘I feel I could hoof it much better with some tea inside me. Let’s go and see Miss Maggie at the Copper Kettle.’

‘Far be it from me to deny you your simple pleasures,’ said Carbonel, ‘but my mind is on higher matters than cream buns and lemonade. I have other things to do. Guard the book well!’ And with tail erect and head held high he padded purposefully away.

21

More Plans

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John and Rosemary ate an enormous tea. I shall not bother you with details of what they had because if you think of all the things to eat that you like best you will know all about it without being told. Miss Maggie and her sister were delighted to see them. It was rather a relief to talk about ordinary things, such as the difficulty of finding someone really reliable to wash up, and how many of the Women’s Instituters had come again and brought their friends, and how their brother had been so deeply impressed by the numbers of their customers. It was only when Miss Maggie said that she would so much like to write a little note of thanks to the kind person who had lent them all the beautiful china that Rosemary jumped up hurriedly.

‘Goodness! It’s half past five, and we promised to be home by six! We simply must go. Thank you for the wonderful tea!’

With the book safely buttoned inside John’s coat, and a good tea inside them, the children hardly noticed the walk home. The car was standing outside number ten when they reached Tottenham Grove. They ran upstairs, still discussing plans for getting the hat next day. Jeffries was drinking a cup of tea.

‘Hallo, dears!’ said Mrs Brown. ‘Had a happy day?’

‘Lovely!’ said both John and Rosemary.

‘I’m so glad. You know, Mrs Pendlebury Parker really is extremely kind. What do you think? There is a Garden F?te tomorrow at Walsingham Court, and you two are to go, and as Mrs Parker has a committee that afternoon, she has asked me if I would mind taking you instead. The sewing is nearly done. You would like to go, wouldn’t you?’

Rosemary pulled herself valiantly together. At any other time she would have loved it.

‘I expect I shall enjoy it no end… when I get there. And it’s lovely that you are going to have a day off. It’s only that John and me had planned something else.’

John made no attempt to hide his disgust.‘It will mean clean nails and a tie!’ he said tragically. But Jeffries broke into his lamentations.

‘I’ll stand you a go at the coconut shy, but not if you don’t look slippy now. We must be pushing off, ma’am. Thank you for the tea.’

Rosemary watched the car as it drove away, and then she went slowly upstairs. What a lot had happened since the day school had broken up and she had bounced her satchel up the stairs. Full moon in two days! If only they could have got out of going to the f?te next day! But she could think of no way that would not seem both rude and ungrateful. It was really very kind of Mrs Pendlebury Parker, and her mother, she knew, would thoroughly enjoy the change from sides to middling. There was clearly nothing to be done, except to enjoy the f?te as much aspossible, she thought guiltily.

Halfway through supper they heard the faint tinkle of the telephone that stood in the hall, and Mrs Walker came halfway up the stairs and called up.

‘It’s for Rosie!’ she said sourly. ‘As if I haven’t enough to do, and my feet are killing me.’

Rosemary ran downstairs.

‘It’s me, John,’ said the small tinny voice the other end. ‘It’s all right. What do you think? The Netherley Players are acting at the f?te! Jeffries is coming to fetch you and your mother at 2.30, so bring the Broom and the Cauldron and Carbonel with you.’

‘Yes, but John…’

‘Can’t stop now. See you tomorrow.’ And Rosemary found herself protesting to a dead receiver.

After supper she discussed it with Carbonel. He had just come upstairs from the basement.

‘Phoo! You do smell of bloaters!’ said Rosemary.

‘Bloaters? So that is what they were,’ said the cat, licking his shirt front complacently. ‘Delicious. Now, you say that these play actors with the hat will be at this place tomorrow? It seems to me it will be next to impossible to get them to give you the Hat, but they might be persuaded to lend it to you for half an hour. John is quite right. The obvious thing for you to do is to take Cauldron, Broom, and me with you.’

‘That’s all very well!’ said Rosemary, ‘but Mummy and Jeffries will never let me. If they see me taking cats and coalscuttles to a garden f?te they’ll think I’ve gone mad!’

‘Well, don’t let them see you. Really, Rosemary, you have no ingenuity.’

A number of rather angry replies came into Rosemary’s mind at this, but she remembered Napoleon and Charles the Second and swallowed the retorts that came to her lips.

‘You can surely smuggle us into the back of the car somehow,’ said Carbonel coolly.

‘After all,’ thought Rosemary, ‘it isn’t being naughty, only odd, to take them with me.’ And she went on aloud: ‘All right, but you will have to go inside the cauldron. Either that or I shall have to leave you behind and say the Summoning Words when we get there.’

Carbonel opened his mouth to say something indignant, but when she pointed out what a long way it was, he changed his mind.

‘Very well,’ he said with dignity. ‘I will travel in the cauldron, but have the goodness to clean out the remains of the Rainbow Magic. Even SHE used to wash up properly afterwards.’

It was no use, thought Rosemary. He always had the last word.

‘Dear Carbonel!’ She laughed and, greatly daring, kissed him on the top of his sleek black head. He did not seem displeased.

Mrs Brown did not have to go to Tussocks next morning, and during a delightfully leisurely lunch Rosemary said:

‘Mummy, wouldn’t it be a good idea to take the old rug off the foot of my bed this afternoon, so that we could sit on the grass even if it is damp? We don’t want to catch cold, do we?’ she added virtuously. Her mother laughed.

‘I’ve never known you bother about whether the grass is damp or not before. But it would be a good idea, all the same.’

‘Well, it wouldn’t do to use Mrs Parker’s beautiful fur car rug, would it?’ said Rosemary.

Rosemary was ready a good hour before the car was due to fetch them. She was wearing her best summer frock with blue smocking on the front and two blue hair ribbons. She had cleaned out the cauldron. The remains of the wishing spell did smell rather nasty, and she had black-leaded its sides and polished the copper band. She felt that it ought to be looking its best, as this was its final magic, and somehow she knew that the battered old thing was grateful. She even contemplated tying a red hair ribbon on the handle of the broom, but decided against it because John would undoubtedly laugh at her. Finally she oiled the handles of the cauldron so that they should make as little noise as possible when she smuggled everything down. Even Carbonel had to admit that she had made a good job of it.

When at last it was time to expect Jeffries with the car, everything was ready. Just as she heard the distant ring of the front doorbell her mother called out:

‘What are you doing, Rosie?’

‘I’ve just made a cup of tea for you and Jeffries, a sort of stirrup cup,’ she said. And without waiting for a reply she ran downstairs with Carbonel in the cauldron covered with the old rug, and the broom under her arm. She did not run far, because it was so heavy, but she got safely to the hall at last. She placed the precious things so that when she opened the door they would be out of sight behind it, and then she flung the door back. There was John on the doorstep – an unfamiliar John with neatly brushed hair, socks, and a long-sleeved shirt with a tie.

‘What an age you have been,’ he said. ‘I thought you were never coming. What are you pulling faces for?’ he began. Rosemary interrupted hurriedly.

‘I promised Mrs Walker that I would open the door because of her poor feet, you know.’ And turning to Jeffries she said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve just made one for you.’

‘But we’ve only just finished dinner,’ said John, who seemed determined to make things as difficult as possible.

‘Not you, silly! Mr Jeffries. It’s all ready upstairs.’

‘Very kind of you, I’m sure,’ said the chauffeur. ‘I can always do with a cuppa.’

Rosemary waited until his gleaming leggings had disappeared up the first flight of stairs; then she said to John, who was looking extremely puzzled:

‘You are stupid! I only did that so that we could get the things in the car without being seen.’ And she closed the door.

‘All right, keep your hair on!’ said John cheerfully. ‘How was I to know that?’

‘I didn’t mean to be cross, but it was horrid when Jeffries thought I was being kind, and really I only wanted to get him out of the way, like Mummy thinking I was being thoughtful when I suggested taking the rug to cover the things.’

Rosemary moved the door so that they could see the cauldron behind it. Carbonel poked a ruffled head out from under the rug and said crossly:

‘I do not like being referred to as “Things”!’ and disappeared suddenly as they thought they heard Mrs Walker coming up from the basement.

The children put the cauldron on the floor in the back of the car, with the broom beside it, and the rug arranged carefully on top.

‘It doesn’t show too much,’ said John.

‘Have you got the book?’ asked Rosemary anxiously. He nodded.

‘About the only advantage of this silly get-up is that there is more room to hide things.’

‘To think we have got everything except the Hat!’ said Rosemary happily.

There was no time to discuss things any further, because just at that moment Jeffries opened the door of the car for Mrs Brown to get into the front seat.

‘Are you all right there?’ said the chauffeur. The two children nodded. He pressed the starter, and they were off to Walsingham Court.

22

The F?te

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Walsingham Court was one of the show places of the neighbourhood. The gardens where the f?te was held were magnificent. I am not going to describe them to you, any more than I am going to describe the f?te, because if you think of the most beautiful rose gardens and yew walks, and rock gardens and herbaceous borders and orangeries that you have ever seen, you will know exactly what it was like. Just as you will know what the f?te was like, with stalls and hoop-las, and tombolas and raffles, and Punch and Judy shows and fortune-tellers. It was hot and sunny, and the children and Mrs Brown wandered round enjoying every bit of it. They spent all their money within the first half-hour, but it did not seem to matter, because there was so much to look at.

Presently Mrs Brown said:

‘I simply must sit down! I think I shall watch the dancing display from a deck chair. Would you two like to go off on your own?’

This was the moment they had been waiting for. Rosemary nodded.

‘All right, dears. But be back by quarter to four because we have got tickets for the first tea.’

There was no time to reply, because the enclosure reserved for the dancers had already been invaded by a dozen little girls in very pink crinolines and poke bonnets. They were apparently showing their unwillingness to go walking with an equal number of little girls dressed as boys.

‘And I don’t blame them,’ said John. ‘Why can’t they just say, “Not likely!” or something, instead of this silly dumb crambo business? Come on. I saw where the Netherley Players are doing their stuff.’

Secretly Rosemary would like to have watched the dancing, but she knew that they had a great deal to do and not much time in which to do it. There was a series of notices which pointed the way to the Netherley Players. It seemed that they were giving three performances. The one at two-thirty was over and the next was at five, with a final one at seven. The arrows led to a green, grassy amphitheatre which sloped gently down to a broad paved terrace, behind which was a mass of flowering shrubs and trees.

‘What a lovely place for acting!’ said Rosemary. ‘And look, there is a summer-house over there. I expect that is where they change their clothes. Let’s go and see.’

They made their way down the aisle between the rows of empty chairs towards the summer-house. It was a wooden building with two low storeys and a thatched roof. Both children silently thought that it would be first-rate for playing in. When they reached the three shallow steps which led to the door, they became aware that someone was arguing inside.

‘I told you it was ridiculous to agree to do two plays,’ said a girl’s voice crossly.

‘And I told you that we should not have got the engagement if we hadn’t. Lady Soffit was sure that the same people would come twice if the second performance was something different,’ said a man’s voice. A third person said something that they could not hear and the man replied:

‘Well, now we’ve got to. The tickets and bills are all distributed. Wemust put on the Dream at five o’clock, if we have to do it in flannel bags. I know you didn’t mean to leave half the tunics behind, but can’t you make some more? You have got an hour and a half. There are those old curtains in the van you could cut up. I suppose you didn’t leave the sewing machine behind as well?’

‘Don’t rub it in, Bill. I am most terribly sorry. Of course I haven’t left the sewing machine behind. I’ll try. But I don’t see how I can do it all in time single-handed,’ said the girl’s voice.

‘Good heavens!’ replied the man. ‘Surely, with three women in the company, you can turn out something?’

‘You know quite well that Megs and Sara are completely ham-handed,’ said the first voice. ‘Nobody would dare to sit down in anything they had made!’

John and Rosemary on the step outside suddenly realized that they were eavesdropping, so John knocked on the door, which swung open as he did so. A man stood with his back to them, but hearing the knock he turned. It was the Occupier. His hair was standing on end as though he had just been running his hands through it, and he said ungraciously:

‘What do you want?’

‘It’s us, sir!’ said John.

‘Who on earth is “Us”? Good heavens, if it isn’t the Lathero twins! Now run away, there’s good children. We’re in a frightful jam. We’ve left half the clothes behind. There isn’t time to fetch them, and these useless women don’t seem capable of making any more in time!’ And he ran his fingers through his hair again so that it looked even wilder than before.

‘I know. We heard. We didn’t mean to listen, but you were talking so loudly that we couldn’t help it,’ said John. But Rosemary interrupted.

‘Well, I know who could make them for you if anyone could, and that is my mother. She is a real dressmaker.’

‘Well, that is not much use to us,’ said the Occupier irritably.

‘Don’t be cross with them, Bill,’ said the girl. It was their friend Molly. ‘Where is your mother, dear? Do you think we could possibly persuade her to help us? I feel so desperate that I could brave asking anybody!’

‘She is watching the dancing display. I’m sure she would help,’ said Rosemary. ‘Let’s go and ask her.’

She and Molly went off together in the direction of the sound of the tinny piano, and John was left standing awkwardly with the actors. Three men who had been sitting disconsolately on a couple of dress baskets, got up and sauntered off, and the two girls who were presumably the ham-handed Megs and Sara went on sorting clothes in the corner.

John followed the Occupier on to the little porch, where they both looked anxiously after Molly and Rosemary.

‘I say,’ said John. ‘You have still got the witch’s hat, haven’t you?’

‘Good heavens!’ said the Occupier, whose name was really Bill. ‘You’re not going to start that again, are you?’

‘You did say we could have it, you know,’ said John desperately, ‘when we had collected everything else for the Magic, and we have. Everything. The broom, the cauldron, the book of spells, and a high old time we had getting them, I can tell you!’

There was an awkward silence, during which Bill lit a cigarette. They were both relieved when Molly and Rosemary arrived accompanied by Mrs Brown.

Molly was talking volubly, and Rosemary was grinning from ear to ear, and her mother was saying‘I see’, and ‘I think I could’.

‘It’s all right!’ called Rosemary. ‘Mummy is going to help! I knew she would,’ she added confidently. ‘Now you won’t have to worry.’

The Occupier shook Mrs Brown warmly by the hand.‘My dear Mrs Lathero…’

‘Brown!’ whispered John hurriedly.

‘… Mrs Brown. I can’t thank you enough…’

‘Thank me when we have got it done,’ smiled Mrs Brown. ‘We shall need every minute we can get.’ Then, turning to Molly, ‘Perhaps it would be quicker if I could cut out the clothes on the people who are going to wear them. We needn’t bother about such refinements as hems.’

‘What can I do?’ asked the Occupier humbly.

‘Go away and leave us alone,’ said Molly firmly. ‘Your clothes were not left behind, thank goodness, so we shan’t need you. We have exactly one hour and twenty minutes in which to do it all in! Come on Megs, fetch Harry and Adrian to be fitted. Sara, help us to carry these things upstairs to the upper floor. We had better do it up there.’

Rosemary nudged John.‘Have you asked him?’ she whispered. But the Occupier’s sharp ears heard her.

‘What persistent youngsters you are! Yes, he has asked me.’

‘Look here, sir,’ said John. ‘We know that you bought the hat, and that it is a jolly rare thing. We don’t expect you to give it us. But won’t you lend it just for half an hour, so that we can do the spell now? Then we would never bother you again.’

They waited breathlessly. The young man blew out a cloud of smoke; then he stubbed out his cigarette.

‘All right,’ he said at last. ‘You win. I’ll lend you the hat for half an hour, but you must let me come with you to see fair play. I shan’t be needed here for a bit, so let’s go and fetch it. It isn’t being used today, so it is in the property van behind the greenhouses. Lead on, my young Witch of Endor!’

‘Right,’ said John. ‘You go with him and get the hat, Rosie, and I’ll go to the car and fetch the things. Meet you behind the glasshouses as soon as I can.’

‘What things?’ asked Bill.

This was better, thought Rosemary, and, tucking her hand in his arm, she told him the whole story: how they had searched for the cauldron, about the Wishing Magic and the china, and how they had found the Book of Spells and so nearly lost the withered plait of creepers. She had only just finished by the time they had reached the van. The young man disappeared inside it. Presently he called down,‘Catch!’ Rosemary held out her arms and something black and furry landed in them. It was the Hat at last!

‘The moths have had a regular banquet off some of it,’ he said cheerfully as he jumped down again. ‘Pretty indigestible, I should think, witch’s hat. Hallo, here is John!’ Coming down the path was John with the cauldron in one hand and the broom in the other, and Carbonel trotting sedately beside him. When the cat saw the dilapidated Hat he gave a little ‘Purrup!’

‘Well,’ said Bill, ‘he is certainly a splendid animal. But I can’t hear him talking.’ And he laughed in a bless-your-little-fancies way.

‘That is because you aren’t holding the broomstick. Here you are, sir,’ said John, and he pushed the wooden handle towards the young man so that he, too, could hold it.

‘Do him good,’ said Carbonel. ‘Too cocky by far, he is.’

The Occupier started violently.

‘Do you know, I really did think I heard the cat speak!’ he said.

‘I did,’ said Carbonel drily. ‘I said, you are too cocky by far.’

‘Good heavens!’

‘It is a bit upsetting at first,’ said Rosemary kindly, ‘but you soon get used to it. I dare say it is harder for you, being grownup, I mean.’

‘Well, we aren’t here to make polite conversation,’ said Carbonel. ‘I noticed a small enclosure behind that asparagus bed, with a bonfire burning there already, and no one about. Follow me.’

They all followed, the Occupier, as though in a dream, clutching the broom, and unable to take his eyes off the black cat.

The enclosure was made by a privet hedge which hid a small tool shed, a heap of grass cuttings, and a small, smouldering bonfire.

Rosemary removed the precious withered plait from between the pages of the book of spells. Then she propped the book up against a wheelbarrow.

‘You can read it if you like,’ she said to the young man. ‘But not aloud, because it is a Silent Magic.’

With a dazed expression he turned his fascinated eyes from Carbonel.

‘I say, what about a pipkin?’ said Rosemary. ‘It says “fill the cauldron with seven pipkins of puddle water”.’

‘What is a pipkin?’ asked John.

‘A small earthenware jar,’ said Carbonel. ‘A flower pot with the hole stopped up will do. Rosemary, you can see to that, while someone else gets the fire going.’ He turned to the dazed young man. ‘That may as well be your job.’

‘Yes, yes, of course!’ said the Occupier, and at once feverishly began to collect twigs and sticks which he pushed into the smouldering fire, while John got down on his knees and blew on the embers. Rosemary rolled up her handkerchief and pushed it into the hole at the bottom of a flower pot. It took rather a long time to find enough puddle water to fill the flower pot seven times, but by then the fire had been coaxed into blazing quite merrily. At last the three legs of the cauldron were supported above the flames on two large stones and an old brick, and Rosemary put on the Hat. It was much too big, and only by bending her ears down could she keep it up at all. They removed the shoe-bag from the end of the broom. In spite of their care a number of twigs had fallen off inside the bag. In silence they knelt in a ring, waiting for the cauldron to boil. The sounds of the f?te driftedin to them, very faint and far away. A great bumble bee buzzed heavily by, intent on his own business, and a thrush was tapping a snail shell insistently on the brick path outside the enclosure. Then the water began to bubble. Rosemary took a deep breath.

‘Stand back!’ said Carbonel to the others. ‘And remember, if you love me, do not make a sound. Rosemary, whatever happens, I implore you not to cry out!’

She nodded. The young man sat down heavily on the wheelbarrow. Rosemary straddled the broom. Although her mouth had been dry with nervousness before, now she was wearing the Hat she felt quite calm and mistress of the situation. The broom quivered expectantly beneath her, and she patted it softly.

‘Now!’ said Carbonel, and she leant over and dropped the plait into the centre of the swirling water, which rose up to meet it in a froth of winking bubbles. Without thinking twice she said aloud:

While the mixture’s boiling hot,

Bear me round the reeking pot.

Widdershins, please fly designedly,

Seven times round. And thank you kindly.

The broom shook itself and rose slowly from the ground. At the same time a swirl of steam rose from the cauldron, so that she only caught glimpses of her friends below as she whirled round; John and the Occupier on the wheelbarrow and gazing upwards open-mouthed, and Carbonel sitting tense and upright on an upturned bucket. The broom was making wide circles at some speed, so that Rosemary’s pigtails flew out from beneath the witch’s hat, and what with keeping her balance and stopping the hat from slipping over her face like an extinguisher, she had her work cut out.

At the fifth time round, the steam from the cauldron began to sink, by the sixth it had become a mere trickle, and when the broom deposited her gently by the fire after the seventh circle there was no steam at all. Although the fire still burned brightly, the water in the cauldron was placid and still. Rosemary looked eagerly at its unmoving surface, and there, breaking the reflection of her own face, floated a garland made of seven different climbing plants. Very gingerly Rosemary bent over, and with the handle of the broom hooked it out, and lo and behold, there were flowers of wild rose and bryony. There were white trumpets of bindweed, delicately touched with pink, sweet-smelling clusters of honeysuckle, and little purple vetch, and the leaves and tendrils were as green and delicate as the day on which they were picked seven years ago.

As Rosemary knelt down with the garland on her lap, there fell a silence that seemed as though everything was listening, the sounds of the f?te died away, the birds stopped their twittering, even the thrush stopped hammering his snail shell and stood motionless with his head on one side. Very carefully, very carefully, so that not one strand of the garland should break, Rosemary began to unravel the plait. And while she unravelled, quite silently in her head she said the spell that she had learnt by heart. (If you do not know how she could say it silently, remember the times you have repeated your homework to yourself quite clearly, without making a sound.) The vetch twined its pale green tendrils round her fingers as though to hinder her, the juice from the crushed berries of the bittersweet made the strands slip from between her feverish fingers, but she went on. And this is the spell she said:

Fingle fangle, warp and wind,

Weeds that strangle, climb, and bind,

Plants that trip unwary feet,

Bramble, vetch, and bittersweet.

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… and with the handle of the broom hooked it out.

The scent from the honeysuckle rose sweet and sickly, and so strong that her head began to swim and she felt faint and drowsy, and when she shook off the drowsiness the thorns tore her fingers, but she closed her lips tightly so that no sound should escape, and went on untwisting, untwining.

Fangle, jingle, mickle muckle,

Bindweed, ivy, honeysuckle,

Climbing bramble, tendrilled vine,

Loose your hold, untwist, untwine

Silently, without a sound

Free the Slave and loose the Bound.

The scent from the honeysuckle was so strong that only by a tremendous effort was Rosemary able to finish. But with the last word of the spell the last twist unravelled itself beneath her torn and bleeding fingers, and fell to the ground. For a minute the seven strands lay there, strong and green in the sunlight, and then beneath her eyes they wilted and shrank, the flowers dropped their shrivelled petals and the leaves became dull, the glossy green gave way to dusty brown. And as a balloon withers and shrinks when the air escapes, so the strand of creepers diminished and shrank. And when Rosemary bent down to pick up the withered twig that had once been honeysuckle, it fell to powder between her fingers. A little breeze sprang up, and it was scattered and gone.

The fire was nearly out. The cauldron had boiled dry, and in the bottom was a hole the size of her fist. Rosemary gave a great sigh. She was aware that the thrush was once more tapping with his snail shell. The noise of the f?te sounded cheerfully on the breeze again. She stood up with the broom in her hand. Carbonel was still sitting on the far side of the enclosure.

‘Say the Summoning Words!’ he said harshly. ‘If I am still bound I must come to you.’

Rosemary said them rather faintly. She felt strangely tired.

By squeak of bat

And brown owl’s hoot,

By hellebore,

And mandrake root,

Come swift and silent

As the tomb,

Dark minion

Of the twiggy broom.

Nothing happened. Carbonel still sat unmoved upon the bucket. There was a long, long pause. Then very deliberately he stepped down and came towards her.

‘Little mistress!’ he said.

‘You never called me that before, and now I’m no longer your mistress,’ said Rosemary, and her eyes filled with tears. ‘You didn’t have to come this time when I summoned you!’ Carbonel was purring deeply.

‘I came in gratitude. That will be a stronger bond than any spell.’ And his warm tongue licked her scratched hands.

There was a movement on the other side of the enclosure. The young man got up from the wheelbarrow. He yawned and stretched.

‘Extraordinary thing,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I must have dropped off to sleep, sitting here bolt upright! I had a pretty rum dream, too. I’ll tell you about it sometime.’

Rosemary looked inquiringly at Carbonel, who shook his head.

‘It is just as well he should think he dreamt it. It will save awkward questions.’ But only Rosemary heard him, because only she had the broom.

‘It has been a warm day,’ she said. ‘Thank you very much for the Hat. We shan’t need it any more.’

‘Not at all. I hope you had a good game with it. I say, it’s five o’clock! I must fly. Look here, will you and young John put it back in the van? I will give you the key, then you can bring it back to the summer-house when you have locked it up. Here you are. See you later!’

The children listened in silence to his receding footsteps. Then Rosemary said:‘I know what I am going to do.’

She removed the cauldron, and bent down and blew up the fire again, and then she took the Book of Spells and poked it deep into the smouldering heart of the ashes.

‘Stand back!’ warned Carbonel, and she jumped away just in time. With a swish, a green flame edged with purple shot up ten feet into the air. For a moment it flashed and flickered, then it wavered and sank. There was nothing to be seen of the book in the bonfire, nothing but a trickle of sluggish, oily-looking smoke.

‘You are wise, little mistress!’ said Carbonel.

‘Well, I think it was just silly of her,’ said John. ‘Think what fun we could have had with it on wet days.’

‘Nothing but evil ever came of that book.’

In silence they put away the flower pot in the toolshed, then, taking the Broom and the Cauldron with them, they went to replace the Hat in the van.

‘Before you put the Broom in the car, I shall say good-bye,’ said Carbonel gravely.

‘But shan’t we see you again ever any more? Must you go?’ asked Rosemary.

‘I must go. I have work to do. I shall never forget what you and John have done. You will see me at the Full Moon!’ he said. He gave Rosemary’s hand a little lick, then he turned, and they watched him grow smaller and smaller as he trotted with head and tail erect down a long path bordered oneither side with tiger-lilies. Then he turned a corner and was gone.

‘How simply beastly,’ said John. ‘Everything is over now. We’ve even missed tea. I’m starving.’ Silently he passed Rosemary his handkerchief.

‘We ought to feel as pleased as anything, because we have done what we set out to do. But I don’t feel as though I shall ever be pleased again.’ She blew her nose very hard.

They left the cauldron and the broom in the car suitably hidden under the rug, and then they returned to the summer-house. But it was not possible to feel miserable there for long. To John’s relief there was tea, which they ate sitting on the steps. Mrs Brown and Molly, and even Megs and Sara, were still sewing between mouthfuls. The Occupier and the other men teased the children in a friendly sort of way. It was all very jolly and cheerful, and by the time they had started on thesecond plate of cakes, they felt they knew everyone quite well. The last tunic was nearly done, and Rosemary could see by her mother’s smiling face that she was enjoying herself.

‘I must admit,’ she said to her daughter later, ‘that my heart sank when I thought I had got to sew this afternoon, just when I was off for a holiday. But it has been such fun sewing unusual sorts of clothes, and everyone is so friendly that it has not seemed like work at all.’

‘Your mother is a wonder,’ said the Occupier, and Rosemary flushed with pride. ‘I gather from Molly that not only can she work at twice everybody else’s speed, but that by some mystic process of hers called “cutting on the cross” she has transformed Oberon’s sleeves.’

‘And saved yards of stuff into the bargain,’ said Molly.

The children and Mrs Brown, as guests of honour, sat in the front row for the next performance. They were acting the fairy part ofA Midsummer Night’s Dream, and even John, who usually thought of Shakespeare as somebody invented by masters to harass school-boys, admitted that it was‘smashing’. They were transported by the fairy part, and they laughed and laughed at Bottom and his friends. When it was all over the Occupier took them all round the f?te again, and John won two coconuts and Rosemary a china kitten in a boot which she decided to give to Mrs Walker. And when it was time at last to meet Jeffries and the car, they were both so tired they could hardly keep their eyes open.

‘What a day!’ said John, as he and Rosemary flopped into the back seat.

‘Did you enjoy it, dears?’ asked Mrs Brown.

‘We shall never have such a day again!’ said Rosemary. ‘I wonder what Carbonel meant when he said he would see us at the full moon?’ she whispered to John.

‘I don’t suppose we shall know till tomorrow,’ he whispered back.

23

The Full Moon

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The next day Rosemary was looking pale.

‘Too much excitement,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘I wonder if perhaps you had better stay at home today, instead of coming with me to Tussocks?’

‘Oh, Mummy, please!’ begged Rosemary. ‘If you have nearly finished the sewing I shall hardly have any more time to play with John, and I have got such heaps to talk to him about. Besides, I think I ought to say “Thank you” to Mrs Pendlebury Parker, don’t you?’

Her mother smiled.‘Very well, Poppet. But it must be a really early bed for you tonight!’

Although Rosemary felt there was so much she wanted to talk over with John, when she reached Tussocks she found that by common consent they both avoided any reference to Carbonel or Mrs Cantrip, or anything magic at all. They played good, solid games like Cowboys and Indians all morning, and in the afternoon they built a tree house, which was fun, until Mrs Pendlebury Parker decided that it was not safe and made them take it down again.

When Rosemary and her mother reached home in the evening, Mrs Brown said, firmly:

‘Now, we will have supper straight away; scrambled eggs and jam tart, and then you can have your bath and hop into bed. You may take a book with you if you like.’

Rosemary had her bath in the usual bower of other people’s drying stockings, then she choseThe Wind in the Willows, kissed her mother good night and got into bed. But she could not read. She sat propped against the pillows with the book open before her, but her mind was not on the adventures of Toad and Mole and Rat. It would keep going over the events of the past three weeks. What fun it had all been. What would become of Mrs Cantrip? How would Carbonel win back his place at the head of his kingdom? She closed her eyes to think the better, but she must have fallen asleep, for when she opened them again it was dusk, and the book had slipped to the floor. Something dark and furry leapt on to her bed, and licked her cheek with a familiar rough tongue. She was wide awake at once.

‘Carbonel! I did so hope you would come! What are you going to do? Is it the Law Giving tonight?’

Carbonel was kneading the blanket with his front paws and purring rhythmically.‘Oh, wait a minute while I fetch the broom!’ She jumped out of bed and ran to the wardrobe. ‘Now then!’

‘It is, as you say, the Law Giving tonight. Would you like to come?’

‘Oh, may I? How lovely! Where is it? And how? And what about John? He would be terribly disappointed if he missed it!’

‘Patience, Rosemary. As to where, it will be on the roof of the Town Hall, where it has been at every full moon for four hundred years. And how? By Broom. The fact that the moon is full tonight will give it temporary life, and by Broom we will fetch John from Tussocks. But we must wait for the moon to rise. In the meantime you had better be composing instructions, and mind they are accurate,’ he went on in his old manner. ‘You can’t afford to make mistakes when you are flying high.’

Rosemary put on her old red dressing gown and her slippers with the bobbles on them; then she knelt on the chair by the window, with Carbonel on the sill beside her. The sky was darkening, and the vista of roofs stretched dim and shadowy, away into the distance. Down below she could see countless moving shapes.

‘Carbonel, look! Running along the top of the wall… hundreds of cats!’

‘My people!’ he said. ‘This is a night they will never forget. As yet they know nothing of my return. I thought it best to descend on an unsuspecting enemy. Only Malkin, my father’s friend and adviser, has seen me. He is an old, old animal.’

‘But I have never seen so many cats! Look at them! All running along the garden wall!’

There was a steady stream of animals, black, white, grey, and tabby, silently but purposefully trotting along the garden wall in the same direction, continually joined by other cats where other walls intersected.

‘This is one of the main roads from the outlying parts,’ said Carbonel.

The sky behind the rooftops was becoming lighter.

‘Look!’ said Carbonel. ‘The moon!’

As he spoke, a tiny segment of silver rose from a bank of clouds low on the horizon. Rosemary’s hand lay on the cat’s sleek back, and she felt him stiffen. He was making low, crooning, cat noises in his throat. As the moon rose majestically in sight – a superb moon, round as a pumpkin and golden as honey, filling the rooftop world with light, and deep, mysterious shadow – Carbonelrose to his feet, lifted his head and sniffed the air, and the crooning noise turned to a bubbling wail, which rose and fell, and rose again to a wild, high note which struck the ear like a trumpet call. Then it sank once again to silence. When the moon was sailing high above the cloud rack, he spoke.

‘To Broom, Rosemary!’

And Rosemary strode the quivering Broom with Carbonel balanced on the sadly diminished twigs behind her.

‘Go on, say it!’ he said. She took a deep breath and said:

If you please, my gallant Broom,

Take us straight to John’s bedroom.

And the Broom, which had been giving little hops under her, as though it longed to take the air, rose smoothly and silently, circled once round the room and was away through the window. Rosemary gripped with her knees, and screwed up her eyes and her toes. But the motion was smooth and pleasant, and soon she dared to open her eyes and look around her. They were flying high. They skimmed the weather-cock of All Saints’ Church, where she went on Sundays with her mother, they flew over the shopping centre, now empty and silent, with only here and there a lighted square of window, over the new housing estate and out over the moonlit country beyond. She was so fascinated by the shifting shapes beneath that she forgot to be frightened. The road wandered idly along, like a pale grey ribbon tossed there by some careless giant. Away to the south the river gleamed, a silver streak, and woods and houses, barns and ricks crouched like sleeping animals on the crazy paving that was the fields and meadows. Rosemary was so interested in watching it slip away from beneath her that she was quite surprised when Carbonel said, ‘We’re nearly there. Duck your head when we go in!’

She looked up, and there was Tussocks, apparently rising up to meet them with such speed that Rosemary had a queer feeling in her stomach. How on earth, of all those windows, could the broom be expected to know which was John’s? But it sped on without any hesitation, and as it seemed that they must crash head on into the great castellated wall that rose in front of her, she flung herself flat along the broom and shut her eyes. But it was only by the light touch of a curtain brushing against her cheek that she knew they had passed into the room. There she was, actually on John’s bed, with the broom beneath her. John shot up from the bedclothes, wide awake, with his hair standing up in spikes all over his head.

‘Quick!’ said Rosemary. ‘Mount the broom behind me. We’re going to the Law Giving to see Carbonel take possession of his kingdom!’ To John’s credit, he did not stop to ask questions. He tumbled out of bed, and all he said was:

‘Whacko, budge up!’

Rosemary budged. It was rather a squash, but he bundled up behind her.

‘Make haste!’ said Carbonel. ‘Now, the Town Hall roof, Rosemary.’

After a moment’s thought she said:

On the Town Hall roof put us gently down,

And oblige John, Carbonel, and Rosemary Brown.

She was rather pleased with this, as being both polite and businesslike.

‘Duck!’ shouted Carbonel.

And as they ducked the Broom swooshed through the window, and once more they were sailing through the night air back towards the town. They were not flying so high this time. John was bouncing up and down with excitement.

‘Boy, oh boy! This is terrific! There’s the Lodge and the gardener’s cottage! That must be the railway by Spinnaker’s wood!’

A train, like a jewelled snake, was threading its way through the darkness. A bat blundered into them and squeaked something.

‘Don’t mention it!’ said Carbonel. And the bat flew off again. Soon they were over the first huddle of houses, and as they flew above the town the broom rose heavily. It was travelling more slowly now. The extra weight of John was telling on it. It skirted a tower here and a block of flats there, as though it was conserving its energy. As they drew nearer to the Town Hall they could see the stream of cats below them, still silently crowding in the same direction.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Rosemary. ‘Sometimes it looks like slates and bricks and roofs and chimneys, and sometimes like hills with grass and flowers and trees. It’s difficult to see with the moon going behind the clouds every now and then.’

‘I noticed that,’ said John. ‘Queer. But how could it be grass and trees, when we know it isn’t?’

‘How do you know it isn’t?’ asked Carbonel.

‘Just look at the Town Hall roof!’ interrupted John. They looked. It was a strange sight. The roof of the building in which Queen Elizabeth I had slept was covered with a thatch, not of straw, but of cats, and still more were pushing their way on from the surrounding buildings. So intent were the animals that they did not see the dark shape above them which was the broom.

‘Where shall we land?’ said Rosemary.

‘What about behind that chimney?’ said John.

The moon had gone behind a cloud again, and in the dim light they could not quite make out if it was a chimney stack with half a dozen different cowls and chimney pots, or a tree stump, with gnarled and twisted branches. But tree or chimney, behind it they could see and not be seen. The Broom alighted gently, and they found they were standing with their bare feet, not on cold slates, but on short, soft grass. Rosemary had lost her slippers some time ago. Before them a grassy slope fell steeply down towards a small flat valley, and both slope and valley were covered with cats.

‘Look, they are all staring up at the clock!’

In the centre of the Town Hall roof was a four-sided clock. At each corner was a pillar which supported a small golden dome. Beneath the dome had once hung a bell which warned the town of fire and disaster and great happenings, both glad and sorry. The bell was now in the Fairfax Museum.

‘Ithought it was the clock,’ said Rosemary in a puzzled way, ‘but it can’t be. It is a sort of little temple.’

‘The throne of my fathers!’ said Carbonel with emotion.

‘Then you ought to be sitting there!’ said John. ‘Not that great cat that is there now!’

‘A usurper!’ hissed Carbonel. ‘But he shall not remain there much longer!’

Sitting proudly under the golden dome was a huge ginger cat with a rabble of disreputable animals behind him.

‘I say!’ said John excitedly. ‘I do believe…’

‘Hush, he’s talking!’ said Rosemary.

‘Listen to me!’ said the ginger cat.

There was a sighing murmur from the animals gazing up at him, and the rabble behind him pushed and jostled.

‘Have you all brought your offerings, every cat and kitten among you?’

There was a murmur from the assembled cats.

‘But sir,’ said a voice from the front rank below, ‘it is not possible for all cats to bring an offering. Many are poor and old…’

‘Silence!’ spat the ginger cat, in a voice that made half the listening animals step back. ‘If you are poor, others are not. There are larders and shop counters, are there not? Now, don’t tell me you are going to be so simple as to tell me that you have no money, as though you are merely humans. A pounce, a spring when their backs are turned and the herring, the chicken, or whatever it is is yours!

‘My Court,’ he turned and indicated the grinning animals behind him, ‘my Court and I shall not ask where you bring the offerings from, so long as they are there. But bring them you must!’

‘This is frightful!’ muttered Carbonel. ‘Far worse than I ever dreamed. Here at the Law Giving to incite them to rob and steal!’

‘But look here!’ said John again. ‘I am quite sure it is…’

But the ginger cat was speaking again, and Carbonel said,‘Hush!’

‘Come forward any animal who has been foolish enough to come without an offering!’ went on the ginger animal in a voice that was soft, but so wicked that it froze the marrow in their bones.

A dozen cats cringed forward. Most of them were very old or very young.

‘So many?’ went on their tormentor, with mock sympathy. ‘What a pity. Well, you know what to expect. Or is this perhaps a gesture of defiance? Is there anyone here foolish enough to dispute my right to be a leader among you?’ He was standing now, looking down on them, a magnificent animal.

There was a sound from the assembled cats, half sigh and half murmur, but not one of them spoke. For a brief second Carbonel waited. Then, mounting one of the gnarled branches of the tree… or was it a chimney cowl?… his challenge rang out over the rooftops.

‘I do!’

There was a pause and a stir while every animal turned to look towards the voice that had hurled defiance. Hundreds of pairs of yellow eyes gazed up at them.

‘And who are you?’ sneered the ginger cat when he had recovered from his surprise.

‘I am Carbonel X, your king by right of birth.’

There was an excited murmur among the assembled animals.

‘Silence, you rabble!’ hissed the ginger cat, and the murmur died.

‘So you are Carbonel X. You lie; seven years ago he disappeared into thin air, and has never been heard of since.’

‘My Lord!’ said the old voice that had spoken up before. ‘My Lord, there is an ancient prophecy among our people:

A kit among the stars shall sit,

Beyond the aid of feline wit.

Empty Royal throne and mat

Till three Queens save a princely cat.

John and Rosemary could see the speaker now, a gaunt old tabby cat.

‘It is Malkin, my father’s faithful adviser and friend,’ whispered Carbonel.

‘Still harping on that foolish nursery rhyme, my good Malkin!’

The ginger cat laughed a horrid, jeering laugh, and the disreputable mob he called his Court nudged one another and joined in.

‘If it is the Prince, my Lord, he can prove it,’ went on Malkin anxiously. ‘He will have the three royal, snow-white hairs in the end of his tail.’

Rosemary forgot that she was supposed to be keeping out of sight. She jumped up from behind the tree… or chimney stack… and, waving the broom to attract attention, she called out:

‘He really has got three white hairs at the end of his tail – I’ve often noticed them!’

‘So, ho! You have brought your young witch with you!’ jeered the ginger cat. ‘Or are you still tied to her apron strings?’

‘I’m not a witch,’ said Rosemary indignantly, ‘and I never wear an apron, except to wash up! He is absolutely free. I bought him with my three Queens, and then I undid the Silent Magic, and set him free for ever!’

‘It is perfectly true – I saw it all happen!’ John shouted, popping out from the other side of the chimney… or tree.

The cats below raised a murmur that the ginger tyrant could not quell this time. Rosemary saw their glowing eyes switch backwards and forwards from them to the ginger cat, as each spoke in turn. She could see the enemy cat was sitting down once more, motionless except for the twitching at the end of his tail. John suddenly whispered urgently to her:

‘I say, where have the Alley Cats gone to? There were dozens of them standing behind the little temple, and now I can only see about half a dozen of them.’ But Carbonel had eyes for no one but the ginger cat, who had risen to his feet. ‘Keep watch behind you,’ he said quietly, then his voice rang out over the rooftops: ‘Who is for Carbonel the King? For law and order? For peace and plenty?’

Someone shouted‘Carbonel for ever!’ and the mass of cats heaved uncertainly for a minute, then half of them surged towards Carbonel, some of the others slunk towards the ginger cat, and the remainder hovered uncertainly between. The ginger cat stood motionless, but his flattened ears showed how angry he was. The six remaining Alley Cats closed in behind him.

‘Listen to me!’ he snarled, ‘common, black witch’s cat! I am Leader here by right of conquest. If anyone dares to dispute my leadership, let him fight for it!’ He arched his bristling back and hurled a wailing challenge to the stars. Carbonel yawned deliberately. Then he stepped delicately down, his silky body gleaming in the moonlight. Some of the cats closed in behind him, but without taking his eyes off his enemy he said: ‘Stand back, my people. This is between the two of us alone.’ He moved slowly and deliberately into the little arena at the foot of the slope.

24

The Battle

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As Carbonel made his way towards his enemy the animals drew back and made way for him to pass. The ginger cat was waiting for him. They stood facing each other, backs arched and bristling, hurling strange, bloodcurdling taunts at each other.

John was jumping up and down and shouting,‘Go it, Carbonel!’ and ‘Oh boy, oh boy!’

Rosemary felt something furry rub against her bare ankle. It was Malkin.

‘Dear Madam!’ he said. ‘Can you do nothing to help with your magic arts? If only the tyrant would disappear there would be an end to our troubles. The Alley Cats can do nothing without a leader. Can’t you make him vanish in a puff of smoke, or turn him into a toad, or perhaps a mouse?’

‘But I have no magic arts!’ said Rosemary. The old cat sighed.

‘What a pity. Then all we can do is to try to see fair play. I do not trust that ginger fiend. He will stop at nothing to gain his ends.’

‘Couldn’t we stop them fighting somehow?’ said Rosemary anxiously.

‘No. That would do no good, even if we could,’ said Malkin. ‘It would only put off the battle to another time… and blood is as red tomorrow as today’

‘Besides, I’m sure Carbonel would hate us to interfere,’ said John. ‘Look at him now!’

The two cats were stalking round each other very slowly with bristling backs, hurling strange cat insults at each other. Then they stood motionless, nose to nose, spitting defiance.

‘Go it, Carbonel!’ shouted John. ‘Don’t you see, Rosie? He has got to beat that ginger brute in single combat. Though what Aunt Amabel would say, I can’t imagine.’

‘But why should Mrs Pendlebury Parker say anything?’ asked Rosemary absently. The cats were sparring and hissing at each other, as John described it, ‘like a couple of pressure cookers’.

‘Why should Aunt Amabel mind? Well, after all, it is her long lost Popsey Dinkums.’

‘What!’ gasped Rosemary, ‘are you sure? Good gracious, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I’m absolutely certain. I’d know him anywhere. And I did try to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.’

Her attention had left the fight for a minute, but at that moment the two cats sprang at each other, rolling over and over, locked together.

‘Oh dear,’ said Rosemary miserably, ‘I do wish they did not have to do it!’ And she covered her eyes with her hands.

The cats were rolling over and over now, biting and thrusting with their hind claws. They parted, and once more stood, noses almost touching.

‘Oh, poor Carbonel. He is bleeding!’ Although Rosemary had covered her eyes with her hands, she could not resist separating her fingers, so that she could see what was going on. Carbonel had a great gash on his flank.

‘Look at your King now!’jeered the ginger cat. ‘Bleeding like every animal who dares to defy me; bleeding and limping into the bargain! Come on, my witch’s cat!’ and he danced triumphantly round Carbonel, who stood his ground, motionless except for his threshing tail. Five times they sprang at each other, rolling over and over in a flurry of fur, sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other. The watching cats surged silently backwards and forwards as the fighters shifted their battle-ground. The sixth time, a cloud covered the moon so that the children could only see a dark, tumbling mass. John leapt up and down with anxiety, and Rosemary chewed the end of one of her pigtails, a thing she had not done since she was a little girl.

‘Oh dear, what is happening?’ she said in an agony of suspense. It seemed hours before the moon came out again, but when at last the rooftops were flooded once more with pale light, Carbonel was standing, panting, over the prostrate body of the ginger cat. It was true he was standing on three legs, but there was no doubt at all who was the victor. Carbonel threw up his scratched and bleeding head and called:

‘Who is your leader now by right of conquest?’ And the great assembly sent up a wailing cry:

‘You are, O Carbonel! You are!’

The defeated ginger cat said nothing, but he moved his head restlessly from side to side.

‘Oh, be careful, master!’ called Malkin. ‘Do not trust him!’ But his frail old voice was blown away by the little breeze that had sprung up.

Carbonel had turned his back on his enemy, shaking each paw in turn, and as he made his way, limping, up the slope to the little temple, the animals drew respectfully back to let him pass. All eyes were on Carbonel, and nobody noticed that the little knot of Alley Cats had disappeared, but just as the black cat was about to mount the steps at the base of the throne, John suddenly yelled:

‘Look behind you!’

And as he shouted the Alley Cats flung themselves on the unsuspecting Carbonel. Had he not had that second’s warning he would have had no chance at all, but he whipped round just in time to present the oncoming animals with bared teeth and claws. At the same moment from behind the ridge yet another knot of animals leapt on him from behind.

‘You cowards!’ yelled Rosemary.

‘Yes, by gum you are!’ shouted John. ‘Carbonel won his battle, and he is leader by right of conquest!’

‘He can’t fight all those Alley Cats single-pawed,’ said Malkin. ‘Look where the ginger tyrant is egging them on!’

But Carbonel was not alone. Pandemonium had broken loose as more and more animals hurled themselves into the battle, on one side or the other, while from the vantage point of the far ridge the ginger cat urged them on. Carbonel had disappeared under an avalanche of struggling cats.

‘Can nobody remove that ginger fiend?’ wailed Malkin.

‘John,’ said Rosemary. ‘Do you think the broom could take us all three to Tussocks? If only we could manage it, of course.’

‘It’s worth trying,’ said John.

‘Darling broom!’ said Rosemary. ‘I simply can’t say it all in rhyme this time, but when this is all over I will make it into a real poem, a saga, the sort of thing that is told to your children and their children’s children, I promise faithfully. But we must do something quickly to save Carbonel, or it will be too late. Please take us up, John and me, and circle over the battle…’John interrupted:

‘You had better give me your dressing gown, Rosie.’

‘And when I say “Down”, drop like a stone, and John will throw the dressing gown over the ginger cat and scoop him up.’

‘And when she says “Up!” rise at once and circle again.’

And then we had better see what happens next. If you will do all this I will never ask you to do anything again!’

‘Hurry!’ said Malkin. ‘My poor young master!’

Below them was a swaying mass of cats. Only a few, too old or too infirm, or too young, were not engaged in the battle. Rosemary was pulling off her dressing gown. Then she straddled the broom with John behind her. It was not easy to mount because the broom hopped so impatiently up and down.

‘Heaven prosper you!’ said Malkin, as they rose slowly from the roof.

‘Goodbye!’ called Rosemary. ‘Look after Carbonel! Now, Broom, circle round where the battle is fiercest. I can’t see the ginger cat anywhere, John, and it’s all very well to talk about “scooping” him up, but I don’t see how it’s to be done!’

The children peered anxiously into the writhing mass beneath them, made even more indistinct by a haze of flying fur. There was no sign of either Carbonel or the ginger cat.

‘Look there!’ said John, and he pointed to the little temple; and there, by the side of it, sat the ginger tyrant, licking his hurts and grinning at the boiling mass of fighting animals below. John gripped the broom handle with his knees and held the dressing gown with both hands.

‘I’m ready, Rosie! Look out for the lurch when we pick him up!’

Rosemary nodded.

‘One, two, three, down!’ she said, and swiftly and silently the broom swooped. John dropped the thick folds of the dressing gown over the unsuspecting cat. Caught entirely unawares, it fought and struggled in the hampering folds, but John held grimly on.

‘I’ve got him, Rosie. We had better get away as quickly as possible. I’ll tie him up with the dressing gown cord as we go along, for safety’

‘Up, Broom!’ called Rosemary, and nearly shot over the handle as, with a sickening lurch, the overloaded broom rose heavily into the sky.

‘Look up, you Alley Cats!’ called John. ‘Look at your proud leader now!’

The moon had gone behind a cloud again, and as first one and then another pair of jewelled eyes peered up at them from the darkness, the sound of fighting faltered and died. And when the moon came out again there was not a sound to be heard, and every animal in that great assembly was staring up at them, where John held up the ginger cat for them to see, trussed like a chicken with the dressing gown cord.

‘Who is your Leader by right of birth and conquest?’ And the cats below cried, ‘Carbonel, Carbonel is our leader!’

‘That’s all very well,’ whispered Rosemary, ‘but where is Carbonel?’

‘Don’t worry, Rosie, I saw him throw off a pile of cats just now. He looked shaky but determined. I say, look at the temple!’

Rosemary looked. Underneath the golden dome, sitting on the throne of his fathers, was Carbonel. The broom circled round the temple, and he gazed up.

‘Goodbye, Carbonel! We are taking him back where he belongs!’ called Rosemary.

‘He could never hold up his head here again in any case, and Aunt Amabel will be thrilled to have him back again!’

Carbonel gazed up at them with his great golden eyes.

‘Farewell! Farewell, my faithful friends! And the gratitude of a king go with you!’

And as the broom turned and headed towards the country, they heard a triumphant cry which grew fainter and fainter as the Town Hall faded into the distance.

‘Long live King Carbonel! Long live King Carbonel!’

25

The End

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The broom skimmed off obediently at Rosemary’s request.

‘Oh, no you don’t, my Popsey Dinkum!’ said John, as the ginger cat renewed his struggles. ‘And that is not at all the sort of language that Aunt Amabel likes to hear!’

At the mention of Mrs Pendlebury Parker the animal mewed pitifully.

‘Well, thank goodness he is able to struggle so hard,’ said Rosemary. ‘It shows that he can’t be very badly hurt. I say, John, we’re flying awfully low.’

John had been so busy with his bundle of cat and dressing gown that he had had no time for anything else. They were flying over the new building estate at the edge of the town now, barely skimming the chimney pots. Once Rosemary banged her leg on a lightning conductor.

‘I’ve noticed that when the moon is shining clearly, it seems to gain height.’

‘I should think that the poor thing is completely worn out. It has been tremendously plucky all evening, and now it has got this hefty great weight to carry’

Rosemary patted the broom gently. It was warm and damp beneath her fingers like an over-ridden horse.

‘Please do your best, dear Broom! You have been so splendid, but I know the last bus has gone, and we couldn’t walk all these miles, not with bare feet we couldn’t.’

The broom seemed to shake itself; then it rose a little higher. Luckily the moon came out again, and it seemed to take fresh heart. They made steady progress for some distance, but by the time they had reached the Lodge of Tussocks the broom had barely strength enough to clear the gate. The trees on either side of the drive were thick and tall and very little moonlight found its way beneath them. It struggled bravely on, but beneath her anxious fingers Rosemary could feel its pulse beat uncertainly, and several times John, who was fully occupied with his bundle, felt his bare feet drag painfully on the gravelled drive. When they came to a bend in the drive the broom seemed uncertain of its direction and went blindly on towards the rhododendrons. If it had not been for Rosemary’s guiding hand it would have blundered into the shrubbery.

‘Shall we get off and walk?’ asked Rosemary. ‘We’re nearly there.’

Indeed, Tussocks was in sight, huge and dark except for one single light. But the gallant broom shook itself once more. They could feel it gather itself together for one last effort. Steadily it sped on over the final hundred yards, head up and its few remaining twigs only occasionally dragging on the ground, to fall with a clatter on the top step of the broad flight that led to the front door.

‘Good old Broom!’ said John, and stooped to pat it as it lay panting on the ground.

‘I say, Rosie,’ said John suddenly. ‘What on earth are we going to say to Aunt Amabel?’

But Rosemary was already hanging on to the great wrought-iron doorbell and ringing with all her might. Not until she heard it clanging in the distance did she realize that arriving in the middle of the night in their night things with the missing cat rolled up in a dressing gown, would need a great deal of explaining.

‘You owl!’ said John.

‘Owl yourself!’ said Rosemary. But there was no time for a ‘you’re another’ kind of argument, for the light above the door was switched on, and after the bolts had been shot back the door was cautiously opened, and there stood Chambers, the butler, in a purple dressing gown.

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‘Farewell! Farewell, my faithfulfriends!’

‘H… hallo, Chambers!’ said John, as airily as he could. ‘It’s me and Rosemary Brown. Do let us in. It’s a bit cold out here in nothing but pyjamas.’

‘Master Lancelot, you naughty boy! Whatever are you doing out at this time of night, and in your night things, too?’

‘Well,’ said John slowly. ‘It’s like this…’ But a voice from the stairs interrupted. It was Mrs Pendlebury Parker.

‘What is it Chambers?’ she asked, and then she saw John. ‘Lancelot, come here at once! Out at one o’clock in the morning and not even properly dressed! And Rosemary in her nightdress! What is the meaning of this?’

‘I am very sorry we are out so late,’ said Rosemary, ‘but we have brought back your Popsey Dinkums. We rescued him from a fight. He is wrapped up in my dressing gown.’

John was already undoing the cord, and unceremoniously unrolling the cat.

‘My Popsey Dinkums!’ shrieked Mrs Pendlebury Parker, as the battle-scarred animal emerged. ‘What have the nasty rough cats been doing to you?’ And she fell on her knees and hugged the dishevelled animal to her pink satin dressing gown. Then she looked up at the children. ‘My dear Lancelot, I don’t know what you have been up to, but if you have brought me back my darling Popsey Dinkums I cannot be cross. But what about Mrs Brown? Rosemary, I cannot believe that your mother knows anything about this!’

‘No, I’m afraid she doesn’t. I’m afraid I didn’t think. I just…’ She broke off. Suddenly she felt that the only thing that mattered was that she should be able to lie down and go to sleep.

‘Well, we can’t disturb her at one o’clock in the morning. It would frighten her out of her wits. We must ring her up first thing before she has time to discover you are not there. What time does she usually get up?’

‘About seven, as a rule,’ said Rosemary faintly.

‘Good gracious me! The child is falling asleep on her feet. Chambers, you had better put her in the pink room, and we will discuss it in the morning. And my darling Dinkums shall have his very own blue cushion to sleep on, and some chicken, he shall! Chopped up very fine, Chambers, don’t forget.’

‘Very good, madam,’ said Chambers, with disapproval of the whole affair oozing from him.

Rosemary had a dim memory afterwards of having been carried upstairs and put into a huge bed, and the next thing she knew it was broad daylight, and John was shaking her arm.

‘Wake up, Rosie! It’s after eight o’clock. Look here, what did we do with the broom last night?’ Rosemary sat up.

‘Goodness, I forgot all about it. We must have left it on the doorstep. How could we have been so ungrateful?’

‘Well, come on, let’s go and look.’

She was just going to jump out of bed when she suddenly remembered something.

‘But John, I’ve no clothes to put on. I can’t go about in my nightie!’

‘It’s all right. I’ve brought you a pair of shorts of mine and a shirt… Buck up and put them on and I’ll tell you what has been going on. You know, Aunt Amabel is a good sort, really. She rang up your mother before she had time to discover that you were not there, and she got her to promise that she would not be angry with you because we brought back her beastly Dinkums.’ Rosemary felt a great wave of relief, because how could she possibly explain it all even to the most understanding of mothers? ‘And that isn’t all,’ went on John. ‘She says that you and I must share the reward she offered!’

‘Gracious!’ said Rosemary. ‘I had forgotten that there was a reward.’ She had put on the shirt and shorts and was watching with interest the three different views of herself brushing her hair that she could see in the great three-sided mirror. The brushes had gleaming silver backs with initials on them.

‘It will be twenty-five pounds each,’ said John. Rosemary dropped the brushes and gasped. ‘I can see you with your mouth open three times over in that looking glass – you do look funny! Buck up, we have just time to look for the broom before breakfast.’

They ran downstairs together and out of the front door, but there was no sign of the broom where they had left it on the doorstep. An old man in a green apron was sweeping up some leaves from the drive. John hailed him.

‘I say, Wilson. Did you see an old broom here on the steps this morning?’

‘No, Master Lance, there weren’t no broom. Only an old stick that might have been the handle of one.’

‘What did you do with it?’

‘Bless you, I put it on the bonfire behind the tool shed, not ten minutes ago.’

‘Quick!’ said John. ‘We might be in time to save it!’

They ran faster than they had ever run before, round to the other side of the house, along the terrace, through the rose garden to the tool shed, which was at the far end of the kitchen garden. But they were too late. As they reached the bonfire a shower of sparks of every colour of the rainbow shot up from the glowing heart, but there was no sign of the broom handle, only a handful of glowing wood ash.

‘Goodbye, Broom!’ said Rosemary softly, ‘and thank you.’ And as if in reply a little puff of smoke wreathed its way up and was gone. The children walked in silence back to the house.

‘There is a letter for you, Master Lance,’ said the maid who brought in their breakfast. It was scrambled egg and sausages, which was the nicest breakfast that Rosemary could have chosen. But she sat looking at her plate with unseeing eyes. It was all over. Even if she ever saw Carbonel again, without the broom she could never hear him talking to her. She felt she ought to be feeling pleased at the success of all their plans, but all she could feel was that everything had gone flat and dull. John would be going home and there would be no more Tussocks. Her gloomy thoughts were interruptedby John, who was reading his letter.

‘I say, Rosie. My mother says that when I go home next week we are going to the sea, because of my sister being peaky after measles, and she says would you like to come home with me and go with us? Would your mother let you?’

‘Would you let me, Mummy?’ said Rosemary, when a bewildered Mrs Brown arrived, ‘or would you be too lonely?’

Her mother smiled.‘I shall be far too busy to be lonely.’

‘More sides to middling?’ asked Rosemary sympathetically.

‘Not this time, darling – moving house!’

‘Moving house? Are we leaving Tottenham Grove?’

Her mother smiled again.‘You are not the only person to spring surprises! I had a letter this morning from Mr Featherstone, the man that for some reason you and John call the Occupier. He has offered us a flat in his house, unfurnished, so that we can have all our own furniture again.’

‘But Mummy, can we afford it?’

‘I think we can, because instead of paying him rent he wants me to be Wardrobe Mistress of the Netherley Players. That will still leave me plenty of time to do my own work as well. What do you think of that?’

I am sure I need not tell you what Rosemary thought, because if you have read her adventures as far as this I am quite sure you will know.

When she returned from her holiday with John and his family, looking so brown that her mother barely knew her, it was to their new home, with all their own familiar furniture to welcome them like old friends. One of the first visitors they had was a magnificent black cat with three white hairs at the end of his tail. Of course it was Carbonel, and although she could no longer hear him talking he purred so loudly that there was not much doubt what he meant.

Rosemary kept her promise to the broom, and wrote the whole story as a ballad, which she had accepted for the school magazine. As for Mrs Cantrip, without her book of magic she became quite clean and respectable. Rosemary persuaded Miss Maggie to give her a job as washer-up. The last time I had tea at the Copper Kettle, that thriving teashop, she was still there, and giving every satisfaction.

2. THE KINGDOM OF CARBONEL

1

The Green Cave

Rosemary Brown picked a stick of rhubarb from the end of the garden, and taking care not to spill the sugar in the saucer she was carrying, bent herself double and crept between the currant bushes. Then she sat down in the green cave made by the unpruned branches which met over her head. The ground was covered with coarse grass, and it made a very comfortable secret place.

She dipped the rhubarb into the saucer and bit off the sweetened end with a crunch. In spite of the sugar, it was so sour that it made her nose wrinkle, so she licked the end of her finger, pressed it in the saucer and finished the sugar that way instead. When it was all gone, she lay flat on her back with her hands under her head and stared up at the summer sky which showed through the shifting chinks between the leaves.

There was half an hour before she would need to get ready to meet her friend John at the station, and the whole summer lay ahead. It was nearly a year since she had seen him, but what a full year it had been! First of all there had been moving. Life was very pleasant now that she and her mother lived in the top flat at 101 Cranshaw Road, instead of in uncomfortable furnished rooms. Then there had been the fun of playing in the big, pleasantly neglected garden. Lessons, too, had gone so much better. She had worked very hard and, as a result, had won a scholarship and next term was going to the high school. Being between two schools gave her a pleasantly suspended feeling, like treading water.

Rosemary gently prodded a ladybird which had been walking over the gingham mountain of her chest. She wanted it to climb on to her finger.

‘I hope it will be as much fun playing with John this holiday as it was last summer,’ she said aloud to the little creature. After being headed off twice, it had obligingly clambered on to her fingernail.

‘We had some glorious games,’ she went on thoughtfully. ‘Of course we had the garden at Tussocks to play in then.’ Tussocks was the grand home of John’s aunt who lived outside the town. ‘But it’s a funny thing, Ladybird, I can’t remember what it was that was such fun when John came to play with me! It was something to do with a black cat. He was called Carbonel. And then there was an old woman whose name was Mrs Cantrip. I think,’ she added slowly, ‘she was a witch, and there was magic. Or did I dream that part?’

Rosemary frowned. She had a vague idea that magic and high school girls did not go together, so she shook her head in a puzzled way.‘I’m sure there was something else.’

The ladybird was now plodding laboriously up the slope of her finger. When it reached the back of her hand, it sat quite still for a moment in one of the little dapples of sunlight that filtered through the leaves, then, without any warning, spread its spotted wings and flew away.

‘Of course! Flying!’ said Rosemary, sitting up suddenly. ‘That’s what we did, and on a broomstick! Now I wonder if –’

But she never said what she wondered, for sitting at her feet, quite motionless, with his eyes closed as though he was waiting for something, was the most magnificent black cat she had ever seen. The golden flecks of sunshine gleamed on his glossy coat and the magnificent span of his whiskers. He opened his great yellow eyes as Rosemary sat up, but he did not move.

‘Why,’ said Rosemary, ‘I was just that minute thinking of a black cat I knew once… or I think I did… or perhaps I dreamed about…’ She tailed off lamely. The feeling that the creature had been sitting there for some time without her knowledge, combined with his unwinking golden stare, made her feel a little uncomfortable.

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‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘you are almost as beautiful as the cat in my dream, and he was a royal cat, so you need not be offended,’ she added hurriedly, almost to herself.

The animal had lifted its head in a disdainful way.

‘May I stroke you?’ she asked a little shyly, putting out her hand. But before she could touch him she heard her mother calling from the house.

‘Rosie! Time to get ready, dear!’

Rosemary turned to the sound of her mother’s voice. When she looked back again, the black cat had disappeared.

‘Rosie!’ called her mother faintly, but more urgently this time.

Rosemary crawled out on hands and knees, but she did not answer her mother until she reached the lawn, because she wanted to keep the Green Cave a secret.

‘Coming, Mummy!’ she called.

She looked back as she reached the house, and she was just in time to see a black cat leap up on to the garden wall, trot along the top and disappear behind the tool shed.

John’s train was late. When it came in at last and hissed itself to a standstill, the doors burst open and people poured out in every direction. Rosemary and her mother looked anxiously up and down the busy platform, but they could not see him.

‘That looks like John over there,’ said Rosemary, ‘but it couldn’t be – he’s too tall!’

But the boy came up to them, grinned and said,‘How are you, Mrs Brown? Hello, Rosie!’

He refused any help with his suitcase and walked to the gate with Mrs Brown. The two of them talked together about the journey, about John’s father and mother and about how hot it was. Rosemary followed, carrying John’s raincoat. Studying his back as she walked behind, she realized that she had to look up to the tuft of hair that still stood up at the back of his head. Last summer it had been level with the top of her own fair hair. He was talking to her mother in a rather grownup way. Rosemary’s heart sank.

‘Well, at least his hairdoes still stick up,’ she thought to herself. ‘That’s something, I suppose. He’s come for three whole weeks, and if he’s gone all grownup since last year, whatever shall we do all the time?’

They had tea as soon as they reached home. It was a special tea, with watercress, strawberry jam and brandy snaps which Rosemary had made herself. A lot of them had broken, but she had thought it did not matter, because she and John could eat the bits afterward in the Green Cave. Now, she did not feel sure that John was the sort of person who would enjoy the Green Cave at all.

It was a quiet meal, with Mrs Brown making most of the conversation. Afterward, John politely offered to help wash up.

‘Not when you have only just arrived, dear,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘But you can help Rosie clear away, then I expect you would like to run and play in the garden. I’ll see to the tea things.’ She watched a little anxiously while they both stood with loaded trays, each standing back politely to let the other through the door.

When they had stacked the plates, they ran down the four flights of stairs into the garden.

‘It really belongs to all the flats. The garden, I mean,’ explained Rosemary. ‘But the grownups hardly use it. There are no other children, so the garden is practically mine. Would you like to see my flower bed?’

They walked sedately down the path, while Rosemary tried to think of something to say.

‘Did you have a good term – at school, I mean?’

‘Not bad,’ said John.

‘Oh good!’ said Rosemary. ‘I’m going to the high school next term. I expect I shall have a ponytail.’

‘Sally’s got one. You remember, my elder sister? It was perfectly sickening. One minute she was decent – sandals and plaits, like you, and the next she wore a ponytail and slip-on shoes, and wouldn’t play anything sensible.’

Rosemary only half listened; the other half was thinking:‘This just can’t be the same John I played with last summer who had all those glorious adventures with me! Perhaps this proves that I did dream the magic part, and the flying, and the black cat that talked.’

‘Goodness!’ she said aloud. ‘Talking of black cats, there he is again!’

‘I wasn’t talking about black cats,’ said John.

‘That’s the second time today,’ said Rosemary excitedly. ‘Look on the garden wall!’

John looked. Then he said in a matter-of-fact voice,‘I expect it’s Carbonel.’

‘John!’ said Rosemary, and she turned to look at him, beaming from ear to ear. ‘Then it did happen! You remember the magic, and the flying and everything?’

‘Of course it happened!’ said John in astonishment. ‘Good old Carbonel! Come on, Rosie, let’s see if we can catch him!’

They ran to the garden wall and looked along it both ways, but there was no sign of the cat. John stood on the rusty old garden roller and tried to look along the top, but the roller moved when he stood on tiptoe, and he fell off on to a rubbish heap. When he sat up with leaves in his hair, Rosemary began to giggle, and presently John joined her. The invisible wall of shyness between them melted as though it had never been.

‘Come on, come and see my Green Cave!’ said Rosemary, as she pulled John to his feet.

They crawled in on hands and knees.

‘What a glorious place!’ said John, as he tucked his feet under him. There was not much room for two.

‘Let’s make this our headquarters!’

It was going to be all right after all, thought Rosemary, and she ferreted happily under a pile of leaves and brought out the broken brandy snaps in a biscuit tin. They sat and munched happily together.

‘I’m not really going to have a ponytail,’ said Rosemary suddenly.

‘You are an owl, Rosie!’ said John, and tweaked one of her plaits in a friendly way. ‘Come on, let’s go and play something!’

2

Carbonel Again

Mrs Brown was a widow. She added to her small pension by dressmaking. The house in Cranshaw Road belonged to Mr Featherstone, who ran a travelling Repertory Company called the Netherley Players. Instead of paying rent for the flat, Rosemary’s mother looked after the costumes of the Company. These were kept in the old stables of the house.

After breakfast next morning, Mrs Brown said,‘Rosie, dear, I’ve got to get on with those Roman togas in the costume room this morning – simply miles of machining, so will you and John do some shopping for me?’

They fetched a basket. With the shopping list on the outside of an old envelope and a pound note inside, they ran downstairs.

‘Good heavens!’ said John, as they closed the front door behind them. ‘There he is again!’

Sure enough, on top of one of the stone balls that stood on each gatepost, sat Carbonel. As soon as John and Rosemary reached the gate, he dropped silently down beside them.

‘Good morning!’ said Rosemary politely. ‘We’re going shopping, but we shan’t be long.’

‘It’s a funny thing,’ said John, ‘but he makes me feel I ought to bow to him. Hallo! He’s following.’

Carbonel was trotting quietly at their heels. He went with them to the baker’s, and the fishmonger’s, and the grocer’s and the little shop that sold newspapers and sweets and ices.

Once, they tried to see if they could shake him off by running quickly around a corner and diving down a little alley. But when they came out of the alleyway, after waiting for several minutes, there the black cat was sitting at the entrance, quietly washing his paws, which made them feel rather silly. The only difference was that from that moment on he walked beside instead of behind them, as though he intended that they should not escape.

On the way home, they sat down on a seat by the side of a quiet road to eat the ice creams they had bought at the little shop. They licked in silence, and Carbonel sat at their feet and stared and stared at them.

‘He’s beginning to make me feel uncomfortable,’ said John.

‘Do you think he’s hungry?’ suggested Rosemary.

‘Doesn’t… look… like it. Fat… as butter,’ replied John in the jerky way of someone whose tongue is occupied with capturing escaping ice cream.

‘Now you’ve offended him!’ said Rosemary reproachfully. Carbonel had turned his back on John and was gazing up at Rosemary. ‘Are you hungry, Carbonel?’

She held out the packet of fish. It was one of those very fishy parcels. Carbonel’s nose quivered slightly at the enticing smell, but he closed his eyes resolutely and opened his mouth in a disdainful yawn.

‘Well, it’s clearly not that,’ said John. ‘Listen, Carbonel –’ he went on. But the animal continued to sit with his back turned, as though John did not exist.

‘I expect you’d better apologize, John,’ said Rosemary.

John muttered something under his breath and then thought better of it.

‘I’m sorry, Carbonel, honestly I am. I forgot how touchy you are. But I do wish to goodness we knew what was the matter!’

‘Do you want to tell us something?’ said Rosemary.

Carbonel turned and, putting his front paws on Rosemary’s knee, licked the back of her hand with a warm, rasping tongue.

‘But how can you tell us?’ asked John.

Greatly daring, Rosemary stooped down and gathered the black cat into her arms, because she felt he needed comforting. He was so heavy that it was quite an effort. She put him on her knee. He no longer fitted into the hollow of her lap, and she had to hold him with both arms or he would have overflowed on to the wooden seat.

‘We’d do anything we could to help you, Carbonel. Wouldn’t we, John?’

John nodded.‘But how can we tell what is the matter if you can’t talk to us? What can we do?’

‘Why don’t we consult Mrs Cantrip?’ suggested John. ‘I know she is supposed to have retired from being a witch, but perhaps we could persuade her to tell us if there is anything we could do. Hi! Carbonel!’ he protested.

At the mention of Mrs Cantrip, Carbonel stood up on Rosemary’s knee and, with a deep, bass purr, thrust the top of his sleek head against her chin again and again. Then he jumped on to John’s lap, upsetting the shopping basket so that fish, biscuits, bacon and sugar went rolling on to the ground. They stuffed them back into the basket and set off home, Carbonel with tail erect, trotting before them.

‘The last time I saw Mrs Cantrip she was washing dishes at the Copper Kettle tea room,’ said Rosemary. ‘I don’t know if she is still there.’

‘Let’s go and see,’ said John.

They set out for the Copper Kettle early after lunch. Carbonel was waiting for them on the gatepost. They explained where they were going, but, instead of coming with them, the black cat showed complete indifference. He sat down in the middle of the pavement and began to wash his tail. John and Rosemary walked past, but Carbonel caught up with them and calmly placed himself in front of them again. This time he transferred his attention to his left hind leg.

‘Well,’ said John, ‘you’d better hurry if you want us to go and find Mrs Cantrip, Carbonel, because I’m not going without you and that’s final.’

Carbonel gave him a withering glance, then trotted ahead, keeping pointedly to Rosemary’s side of the pavement. Having decided to go with them, he set off at such a speed that they could barely keep up, and when they finally reached the Copper Kettle, which was some distance away, they were hot and footsore.

Miss Maggie and her sister Florrie, who owned the teashop, were old friends. They welcomed the two children with cries of pleasure. Carbonel waited outside.

‘Why, if it isn’t John! And how you’ve grown!’ said Miss Maggie with upraised hands. As everyone of a still-growing age knows, there is no answer to this, so John merely grinned sheepishly.

‘Now, come into the kitchen, dears. We’re just putting away the lunch things. Choose whatever you’d like to eat. How about some nice fruit salad?’

John winked at Rosie as they followed Miss Maggie. Fruit salad was always welcome, and Mrs Cantrip would probably be found in the kitchen.

But, standing at the sink in a cloud of steam, was not Mrs Cantrip, but a square, vigorous young woman who was accompanying her saucepan cleaning by singing a rather doleful hymn tune. This was a thing that Mrs Cantrip would certainly not have done.

‘To tell the truth, dear,’ said Miss Maggie in reply to Rosemary’s inquiries, ‘I was quite glad when the funny old thing left of her own accord. Want some more cream on your fruit, dear?’

Rosemary nodded. She finished the last of the pineapple, which she did not really like, and prepared to enjoy the pears and peaches.

‘I’m always saying to Florrie,’ went on Miss Maggie. ‘Florrie, I say, if there’s one thing I hate it’s unpleasantness! And really she was so very queer that I never knew quite how she’d take it if I told her to leave.’

‘So it wasn’t you who fired her?’ asked John.

‘Would you believe it? She went off one evening in the middle of the week. Put her shoes and apron in the cupboard under the sink, just as usual, and never turned up again, and with half a week’s wages to come!’

‘We’d send it on to her if we knew the address,’ said Miss Florrie, who had come in while her sister was talking. ‘But she never would tell us where she lived.’

‘Not that she did her work badly, mind you,’ continued Miss Maggie. ‘I will say that. Now it’s no good for you to sniff like that, Doris,’ she said to the new girl. ‘Fair’s fair. But her washing-up water! I do like it clean! She always seemed to get hers not exactly dirty but coloured, somehow – bright red or yellow or green. I can’t imagine how she did it.’

John and Rosemary looked at one another.

‘And when I spoke to her about it once,’ went on Miss Maggie, ‘she said something about clean water being so dull. Did you ever hear of such a thing?’

Conversation became general after this. Presently Rosemary said,‘If you like, John and I could take Mrs Cantrip’s money to her, and her shoes. She used to keep a little shop in Fairfax Market.’

‘Well, that would be kind of you, dears!’ said Miss Maggie.

She rummaged in the cupboard under the sink and brought out an enormous pair of buckled shoes of a very expensive make, but very down at the heel. The apron had a vivid pattern of flowers and tropical fruit. As Miss Maggie shook it out, a little screw of paper fell from the pocket on to the floor. By the time Rosemary had picked it up, the shoes and the apron had already been made into a neat roll, so she put the paper in her pocket. As soon as they could, John and Rosemary said good-bye.

Carbonel paused in his restless pacing as soon as he saw them.

‘Well, if we can find her in her own house, it will really be much better than trying to talk to her at the Copper Kettle with Miss Maggie buzzing around,’ John said, when they had explained the situation.

But Carbonel did not wait for him to finish. He bounded off in the direction of Fairfax Market so quickly that the children did not attempt to keep up with him.

‘Well!’ said Rosemary.

‘If he isn’t at Mrs Cantrip’s house when we get there, I vote we just go away and do nothing more about it,’ said John.

‘I almost hope he won’t be!’ said Rosemary.

But he was. When they reached the little shop that had been Mrs Cantrip’s last year, the black cat was sitting beside the door with what John called his ‘waiting expression’.

‘Supposing Mrs Cantrip doesn’t live here any more,’ said Rosemary hopefully.

‘She lives here all right!’ said John. ‘Look at the curtains!’

There was no longer any trace of a shop. The grimy window was hung with two odd lengths of lace, looped up in an attempt at elegance. One was tied with a bootlace, and the other with a piece of purple ribbon that looked as though it had come off a chocolate box.

‘They aren’t very clean,’ said Rosemary.

Someone had started to paint the battered front door scarlet, but had lost interest halfway down.

‘I say! Look at that notice!’ said John.

Propped against the window was a card which said, in wobbly capital letters,

APARTMENTS

H. and C. in all rooms.

R.S.V.P.

As they looked at it in silence, a bony hand appeared between the dusty curtains and took away the card. John squared his shoulders.‘She’s at home all right. Here goes!’ he said, and he knocked loudly on the door.

In reply to his second knock, the door opened a crack and a voice that was unmistakably Mrs Cantrip’s said, ‘Apartments is let! Go away!’ And the door was firmly slammed in their faces.

When John knocked again, there was no answer, so he pushed open the flap of the letter box and called through,‘Do let us in, Mrs Cantrip, we’ve got something for you!’ But he backed away suddenly when he saw a pair of piercing eyes staring at him from the other side of the letterbox.

Rosemary, who had been trying to see, too, nearly fell over when the door was suddenly flung open.

‘Got something for me, have you?’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘That’s different, that is! Come inside!’

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She stood blinking and bobbing at the open door while the children waited uncertainly on the step. A furry pressure on the back of the knees from Carbonel, which might have been affection, or even a plain shove, sent John stumbling down the step into the house, which was below the level of the road. Of course Rosemary followed.

3

Prism Powder

Mrs Cantrip led the way into an inner room. There was very little furniture, but it was tidy, and on the rickety table was a jam jar which held a bunch of nettles and dandelions. The familiar golden flower faces made Rosemary feel a little braver.

The old woman sat down in a rocking chair by the smouldering fire.

‘Well,’ she said eagerly, ‘hand it over!’

‘It’s from Miss Maggie at The Copper Kettle,’ said Rosemary. ‘She asked us to give you the shoes and the apron you left behind, and the money she owes you.’

As she spoke she put them on the table. Mrs Cantrip hardly bothered to look.

‘Do you mean to say that’s all?’ she snorted. ‘Coming into my house under false pretences, I call it. I could have fetched them for myself any day.’ She started to rock herself violently in the rocking chair, pushing herself off with her big feet.

‘Miss Maggie wondered why you didn’t,’ said Rosemary.

‘Why did you leave?’ asked John.

‘Because the sight of her stirring away at her pots and saucepans made my fingers itch! Hours she spent over her magic books and her mixtures, and never so much as a puff of coloured smoke to show for it! Let alone turning anyone into anything satisfactory, like a blowfly or a spider!’

‘But of course she didn’t,’ said Rosemary indignantly. ‘She wasn’t trying to. That isn’t how you run a teashop! She was making nice things to eat out of cookery books, not magic!’

Mrs Cantrip snorted again.

‘Incompetent I call it. And anyway, I’m letting apartments instead. H. and C. in all rooms.’ She nodded with satisfaction. ‘R.S.V.P.’

‘Have you really got hot and cold water?’ asked John.

‘Who said anything about water?’

‘Well, that’s what it usually means,’ said Rosemary.

‘Not when I use it, it doesn’t,’ snapped Mrs Cantrip rocking with renewed vigour. ‘It means air. Cold when the window is open, hot when it’s shut – if you build up a good fire. It’s up to you. The postman taught me a tidy bit of magic to get a lodger.’

‘The postman?’ said Rosemary in surprise.

‘That’s what I said! He brought me an invitation to a ball once, by mistake. But a bit of cardboard always comes in handy, so I kept it.’

‘But you shouldn’t –’ began Rosemary.

Mrs Cantrip ignored her.‘At the bottom of the card it said R.S.V.P. I asked the postman what it meant, and he said it was foreign for ‘You’ve got to answer.’ A magic rune, you see. That’s what I call practical. So I put R.S.V.P. on my card in the window, and it worked. In half an hour I got a lodger and then, because I didn’t undo the R.S.V.P. straight away, you two came along.’

‘But we don’t –’ began John.

‘That’s a good thing, because you can’t. There’s no room. Apartments I said, and I’m not having togetherments, not with nobody.’

Rosemary looked hopelessly at John. They seemed no nearer to the real object of their visit.

‘Mrs Cantrip,’ interrupted John firmly. ‘We want to ask you something. It’s about Carbonel!’

Mrs Cantrip ceased speaking in mid-sentence and stopped rocking the chair. For a minute, there was complete silence in the dark little kitchen.

‘That animal again!’ said Mrs Cantrip, in a hoarse whisper. ‘Who are you?’

‘We are John and Rosemary. Don’t you remember?

When you retired from being a witch last summer, you sold me your old broom and your cat, Carbonel, and John and I set him free from your spell to be King of the Cats again. We want you to help us.’

The knuckles of Mrs Cantrip’s bony hands showed white where she held the arms of the rocking chair, and her small eyes bored into them like needles.

‘Oh, ah! I remember the pair of you now. Interfering busybodying children. What do you want?’

‘Carbonel is in trouble,’ said Rosemary. ‘At least I’m pretty sure he is, and he can’t make us understand. Won’t you help us?’

‘Why should I help Carbonel?’ said the old woman, in a voice as cold as steel. ‘Did he ever help me? Not him. He hampered me at every turn! Besides,’ she added sulkily, ‘I’ve gone out of business, you know that. Broom, books, cauldron – all gone, and everything as dull as puddle water.’

‘What about the dishwater at The Copper Kettle? How did you make it turn red and green?’ said John accusingly.

Mrs Cantrip’s eyes wavered.

‘That wasn’t what you’d call magic. Not real magic,’ she muttered. ‘Just using up odds and ends of spells I’d got left over. You wouldn’t have me be wasteful, now would you?’ she said virtuously. ‘I couldn’t throw them away. Some dear little child might have picked them up, and then what would have happened to it?’ She grinned wickedly. ‘It’s nearly all gone. I just use a pinch here and a spoonful there, to liven things up a bit. And that reminds me, where’s that apron?’

She pounced on the bundle that was lying on the table, shook out the apron, and felt feverishly in the pocket.

‘It’s gone! It isn’t here! My last little bit of Prism Powder! What have you done with it?’

Rosemary felt hurriedly in her own pocket. The little ball of paper she had picked up from the floor of The Copper Kettle was still there.

‘If I give you back your Prism Powder, will you tell us what we can do to understand Carbonel when he talks to us?’

There was a pause.

‘All right, I’ll tell you! I’ll tell you and willing!’ said Mrs Cantrip, eagerly holding out her hand.

‘Wait a minute,’ said John. ‘You shall have it when you have told us what to do and not before!’

Mrs Cantrip pursed her mouth to the size of a keyhole and rubbed the side of her great nose with a bony finger.

‘I can’t do it myself, not now. That would never do. I know. I’ll give you a prescription and you must have it made up at the chemist.’

‘At the chemist!’ said John.

Mrs Cantrip ignored him. She was ferreting round in the drawer of the table, among bits of string and candle ends. Presently she fished out a crumpled bit of paper, and fetching a bottle of ink and a rather moth-eaten quill pen from the mantelpiece, sat down at the table. For a minute she sucked the end of her pen, then she chuckled, smoothed out the paper, and began writing with great speed. When she had finished, she folded the paper and handed it to Rosemary.

Both children were craning over to see what she was writing, and they were quite unprepared for the pounce that the old woman made on the screw of paper that Rosemary had brought out of her pocket. They unfolded the note she had given them and stared at it.

‘But it isn’t writing! It looks like nonsense!’ said Rosemary.

Mrs Cantrip took no notice. She was undoing the paper. Inside was about a saltspoonful of what looked like tiny grains of hundreds and thousands.

‘Take it to Hedgem and Fudge to have it made up. Now go away. I’m busy.’

As she spoke she dropped a single grain of the powder into the ink bottle. There was a slight hiss, and the muddy-looking ink turned a brilliant scarlet. She dropped another grain into the bottle and the ink changed to pure yellow. Her grim face softened.

‘Good heavens!’ said John with interest.

‘Go away,’ said Mrs Cantrip fiercely, shielding the bottle with her hands.

There seemed nothing else to do, so they went.

4

Hedgem and Fudge

John and Rosemary closed the front door behind them and stood blinking in the sunlight. It was like coming out of a cave. Carbonel stopped his restless pacing and ran to them with an anxious little‘Prrt!’

‘She’s given us a prescription, and we’ve got to get it made up at a chemist’s called Hedgem and Fudge. It looks like nothing but a lot of squiggles to me,’ said John.

‘But so do the prescriptions that doctors write,’ said Rosemary. ‘What’s the matter, Carbonel?’

‘I think he wants to read it,’ said John.

Rosemary bent down and laid the piece of paper on the pavement. Carbonel held it down with one paw and stared at it with unblinking yellow eyes. They waited anxiously while he examined it. First he sniffed it with delicately twitching whiskers. Then he sneezed violently. Finally, he removed his paw and shook it with distaste. But he purred loudly, and gave each of the children an approving lick on a bare leg, and set off at a gallop in the direction of the High Street, looking back from time to time to see that they were following.

‘It’s all so strange,’ said John breathlessly, as they hurried after him. ‘Such a mixture of queerness and commonsense!’

‘I know,’ said Rosemary. ‘And whoever could be going as a lodger to Mrs Cantrip? Oh, goodness! I believe Hedgem and Fudge is that big chemist near the Cathedral!’

‘We shall look pretty silly if we hand over a page of gibberish and say “I want this made up, please!”’ said John gloomily.

But no one can be gloomy for long if he is running, so Rosemary and John stopped talking because they needed all their breath to keep up with Carbonel. Once, in the High Street full of afternoon shoppers, they thought they had lost him, and several times they bumped into people and had to stop and apologize. When Carbonel reached the top of the High Street where the road widens in front of the Cathedral, he waited for them to catch up.

‘There it is!’ said Rosemary. ‘That’s the shop on the other side of the road!’

It was a large, old-fashioned building. Above the cars that honked and hurried, they could see the name in gold letters, as well as two great glass bottles full of glowing red and green liquid that have been the sign of a dispenser of medicine since the days when few people could read.

There was a screeching of brakes as Carbonel stepped without warning on to the pedestrian crossing and with great dignity, tail erect, swept across the road. The drivers who were not angry grinned.

Very red about the ears, John and Rosemary crossed the road behind him.

Although the building was clearly an old one, the shop had been brought up to date inside. Behind the counter, there were rows of little mahogany drawers with cut-glass handles which sparkled in the strip lighting. There were steel chairs to sit on, and one counter, which displayed face powder and lipsticks and shampoos, with a yellow-haired young lady behind it. A smaller counter displayed castor oil, cough medicines and headache pills, with a pink young man behind it. On this counter was a notice which said, PRESCRIPTIONS, so Rosemary handed the piece of paper to the young man.

He took it and glanced casually at the writing. Then suddenly his eyebrows shot up and his neck seemed to lengthen as he peered at the paper.

‘Wait for it!’ said John under his breath to Rosemary.

But far from being angry, the young man said,‘Excuse me one minute!’ and went to consult an older man who was busy in a glass-partitioned dispensary at the back of the shop. They whispered together for a while, and then the older man came over to the counter. First he read the prescription again through his spectacles, then he peered overthem at John and Rosemary.

‘This is most unusual,’ he said. ‘I have never been asked for it before. However, it is not for me to question a prescription.’

He turned to the young man.‘You’d better fetch the steps from the back, Mr Flackett.’

‘What is he going to do?’ Rosemary asked John anxiously.

‘Ask me another! I only hope Mrs Cantrip hasn’t double-crossed us!’ said John.

The young man put the steps against the mahogany partition that divided the window from the shop, and mounted them gingerly, while the older man held them steady. Then he put both arms round the huge glass bottle of red liquid that they had seen from the other side of the road, and breathing heavily with the effort, tottered dangerously down the steps with it into the dispensary.

John and Rosemary stood and listened to the fair-haired young lady serving a customer until the young man returned with a small medicine bottle full of red liquid. There was a pink mark down the front of his white jacket which he was rubbing with his handkerchief.

‘Such an awkward thing to pour from,’ he said to Rosemary, who noticed that his fingers were stained with the liquid. He wrapped up the bottle in white paper which he fastened at each end with a little blob of sealing wax.

‘Excuse me while I look it up in the price list,’ he said, flicking over the leaves of a catalogue. He licked his pink-stained thumb several times the better to turn the pages.

Now this is a horrible habit as everyone knows, but what followed may have cured him forever. He turned to speak to John and Rosemary, and suddenly started. His mouth fell open and all the pink ebbed from his face, leaving it a curious greenish white.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Rosemary sympathetically.

The young man swallowed hard.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ he said faintly, ‘but I distinctly thought I heard that black cat beside you speak! There is a black cat, isn’t there?’ he asked anxiously.

John and Rosemary looked down. There was indeed. It was Carbonel. Tired of waiting outside, he had followed an old lady through the swinging door into the shop. The children looked at each other.

‘What did you think he said?’ John asked tactfully.

The now pale young man swallowed hard again.

‘He said, in a cross voice, “Royalty, and left outside to wait like an old umbrella!” It doesn’t even make sense,’ said the young man unhappily.

‘That sounds like Carbonel all right!’ said John to Rosemary. The black cat stood between them, his ears slightly flattened and his tail twitching. The young man stared fascinated at the cat, and his colour began to come back, but he started violently once more.

‘He’s done it again!’ he said miserably. ‘He says – the cat I mean – to tell you not to take all day about it. Couldn’t you hear him, too?’ he pleaded.

‘No!’ said John and Rosemary. ‘We couldn’t, truthfully.’

‘But a cat talking! Whatever does it mean?’ asked the young man anxiously.

‘I expect it means that you’ve eaten something that has disagreed with you,’ said Rosemary truthfully.

‘I should take some Peterson’s Pink Pills,’ said John. They were the first thing that caught his eye. ‘And go to bed early. Good afternoon! Come on, Rosie!’

He picked up the bottle from the counter and hurried Rosemary from the shop, Carbonel trotting at their heels.

‘But the poor young man! Shouldn’t we try to do something for him?’ Rosemary said.

‘My good girl, what can we do?’ said John. ‘I expect it will wear off in time, and if Carbonel had gone on talking in there, the poor man might have gone completely off his rocker. I suggest we don’t open this bottle till we get back to the Green Cave. We don’t want any more complications. Come on, let’s run!’

5

The Red Mixture

It was long past teatime when John and Rosemary reached home. Mrs Brown was not there. In her place was a plate with some crumbs on it, and a note propped against the sugar basin which said, COULDN’T WAIT. WON’T HANG. GET YOUR OWN.

Rosemary explained that this meant her mother had gone back to the sewing-room because the dress she was making would not fall in the folds she wanted, and that they were to see about tea for themselves.

‘I’m terribly hungry,’ said John. ‘Let’s take it with us to the Green Cave.’

They put a plate of buns and two pieces of cake on a tray. Rosemary added cups of tea, and a saucer of milk for Carbonel; then they carried it into the garden.

The black cat was waiting for them on the path by the currant bushes. As soon as he saw them, he disappeared among the leaves, and when John and Rosemary wriggled after him, with some difficulty because of the tea tray, they found him in the Green Cave sitting serenely on the rusty biscuit tin which had held the brandy snaps. Looking up at him from the kneeling position that was necessary in the cramped space between the bushes, they were a little awed by his quiet dignity. He was looking fixedly at the bottle which they had put on the tray.

‘Come on! Let’s see what the directions say,’ said John, as he tore off the wrapping paper. ‘It has an ordinary chemist’s label. “The Mixture,”’ he read. ‘“Half a teaspoon to be taken after meals as required.” Well, I’m always requiring meals. I’m requiring my tea like billy-oh!’

‘I don’t think it means “meals as required”,’ said Rosemary, ‘but “the mixture as required – after meals”.’

‘Oh,’ said John. ‘Well, let’s hurry up and have our tea now. I’m starving!’

They each took a currant bun which they polished off with not much politeness but with great speed. Carbonel ignored the saucer of milk which Rosemary had poured for him. He sat staring expectantly at the children with wide, golden eyes.

‘We’d better eat the cake, too, to make it a meal,’ said John. ‘One bun is just a snack.’

They finished the cake and drank the tea. What had not slopped in the saucers was cold and rather nasty, but Rosemary swallowed every drop of hers very slowly, because she found herself wanting to put off the moment of drinking the strange, red mixture. John was clearly feeling the same way.

‘Look here,’ he said. ‘There can’t be anything to be afraid of. The chemist’s assistant could hear Carbonel talking, when he licked his thumb with the red liquid on it, so we know it does what we want it to do. Let’s drink at exactly the same minute, then whatever it is will happen to us both at the same time.’

Rosemary nodded, Carbonel came down from the tin, and purring encouragement, rubbed his head against her shoulder. They took their teaspoons and half filled them with the liquid, which fell sluggishly from the bottle. It had a strange, heady smell, rather like crushed chrysanthemum leaves. They knelt together with spoons raised.

‘I’ll say “One, two, three, go!”’ said John.

Rosemary nodded again. She became aware that, except for John’s voice, it was very still in the Green Cave. Even the canopy of leaves above them had ceased its restless stirring. The only moving things were two fat caterpillars with tufted backs, making their way slowly along a twig on a level with Rosemary’s nose. She stared at them unheedingly while John said, ‘One! Two! Three! Go!’

Rosemary took a deep breath, swallowed the spoonful quickly, and shut her eyes.

Behind the red darkness of her tightly closed lids, she felt the liquid fizzing slightly on her tongue. It tasted sharp, but not unpleasant, and glowed comfortingly as it slipped down her throat. There was a tickling in her nose and a tight, uncomfortable feeling in her ears. She felt an enormous sneeze welling up inside her, the father and mother of all sneezes. She tried to fight it down, but it was no good. Suddenly she shattered the silence with three violent sneezes, each one echoed closely by another from John. The two children looked at each other with startled eyes.

The silence was gone. They were surrounded by what at first sounded like a humming noise. Then the hum seemed to break up into innumerable little voices, some high and shrill, some soft and purring, some abrupt as the plucking of a violin string. Rosemary was startled to distinguish a small, singsong voice quite close to her ear saying over and over again,‘Up we go! Up we go!’

She looked around, and saw with astonishment that it was the second of the two caterpillars.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

The second caterpillar halted for a moment, waved its front half about uncertainly, and then hurried after its companion.

‘Don’t look round now,’ it said breathlessly, ‘but I think we’re being spoken to – by a human! What a mercy the great blundering things can’t hear us talking!’

‘But Ican hear you talking!’ said Rosemary, a little nettled at being called ‘blundering’.

Both the caterpillars turned around in astonishment, lost their balance and fell off the twig on to the grass below in two tightly rolled coils from which they refused to budge.

‘Rosie!’ said John. ‘There’s a super beetle here, all green and blue, and he says –’

‘John and Rosemary, will you kindly pay attention!’

They turned to where Carbonel sat enthroned on the biscuit tin, the end of his tail twitching in irritation.

‘That is, of course, unless you find the conversation of beetles and caterpillars more worth while than mine!’

‘Carbonel! How glorious!’ said Rosemary happily. ‘We can hear you talking, too!’

‘Which is not much use unless you’re prepared to listen. After all the trouble I’ve taken with you!’

‘The troubleyou’ve taken withus!’ said John.

But Carbonel swept on.‘I thought I should never get you to understand what I wanted, and when at last you did realize you had to find Mrs Cantrip, and I tried to stop you from wasting your time by going off to the Copper Kettle, would you take any notice? Oh, dear me, no!’

‘Don’t let’s waste time now by being cross!’ said Rosemary. ‘We did the best we could, and we never expected to be able to hear beetles and caterpillars talking as well as you. It is rather exciting, you know!’

She put out her hand, and laid it gently over the angry, twitching end of Carbonel’s tail. For a moment she could feel it stirring beneath her palm. Then, gradually, the furry movement slowed down and ceased altogether.

‘Oh, come off it, Carbonel!’ said John affectionately.

The black cat took him at his word and stepped down from the box.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I have no doubt you did do your best, and I am grateful. And I must say, you were very quick witted to bargain withher for the prescription. Now, pay attention, both of you, because I don’t have much time. I have not gone to all this trouble for the pleasure of a merechat, though I won’t deny I am pleased to see you both again. Very pleased. I need your help.’

‘Of course we’ll help you! Won’t we, John?’ said Rosemary.

‘Tomorrow I must go away,’ Carbonel said.

‘Go away!’ said Rosemary in dismay. ‘Where to?’

‘And when we’ve just found out how to talk to you!’ said John.

‘There you go again! Listen, and I will explain. You know that I am a royal cat, and that my people have their own laws and customs. After dark, the wall tops are our highways and the roofs our mountains and our plains. The Town Hall has been the royal seat of my ancestors for two hundred years, and there I hope my descendants will rule after me. Now that is where I need your help. My royal children –’

‘Kittens! Your kittens!’ said Rosemary excitedly. ‘Carbonel, how lovely! How many have you got? And why didn’t you tell us? We should –’

‘I am trying to tell you now!’ said Carbonel severely.

‘But –’

‘Shut up, Rosie!’ said John under his breath.

‘You may not know,’ went on Carbonel, ‘that it is our custom for each cat to select a human family to look after.’

‘Don’t you mean the humans choose a cat?’ said John.

‘Certainly not!’ said Carbonel coldly. ‘The humans, of course, repay a little of their debt to us with a place by the fire, a saucer of milk, little offerings of fish and meat according to their humble means.’

‘But besides catching mice, what –’ began John. It was Rosemary’s turn to give a warning nudge.

‘Our great gift to the human race is our example.’

‘Example?’

‘That is what I said. You fuss and flurry and rush about all day, and for what? In the midst of it all, we sit calm and unruffled, meditating on the mystery of Life and Eternity.’

‘But your kittens,’ said Rosemary. ‘Do tell us about them! How many are there? And are they like you? Oh, I must see them!’

‘There are two of them, a boy and a girl,’ said Carbonel. ‘They are said to be remarkably handsome – but whether they are like me you must judge for yourselves,’ he added modestly.

‘Then we can see them?’

‘Certainly. I have chosen you to look after them while I am away.’

‘Of course we’ll look after them for you! We’d love to, wouldn’t we, John? I shall have to ask Mother, of course, but I’m sure she will say yes.’

‘Guard them faithfully till I come back.’

‘When will that be?’ asked John.

‘Three days? Three weeks? Three months? Who can tell?’

‘But why must you go?’ persisted John.

‘Once every seven years I and my royal brothers are summoned to the presence of the Great Cat.’

‘But who are your royal brothers?’ asked Rosemary.

‘You must not think that I am the only cat king,’ explained Carbonel. ‘Every city in the world where there are cats has a king to rule over them, just as I rule over the cats of Fallowhithe. When the Summons comes, we must all obey. There will be lean, blue-eyed cats from Siam, long-haired cats from Persia, great tawny jungle cats, and thin, big-boned cats from Egypt. Cats of every colour – black as coal, white as milk, grey as woodsmoke. Whatever the colour, whatever the kind, when the Summons comes we all must answer.’

‘But who will look after your kingdom for you while you are away?’ asked John.

‘My beautiful Queen, my lovely Blandamour, will rule with the help of my cousin Merbeck. Blandamour is wise and good, but I cannot answer for all the queens of the neighbouring towns. Queen Grisana of Broomhurst is ambitious, and her husband is old. Do not let my kittens stray.

They are a little–’ There was a pause, as though Carbonel were searching for the right word. ‘High spirited,’ he concluded. ‘Early tomorrow morning, before I go, I shall visit you again and bring my royal children with me.’

It was getting dark in the Green Cave, and the shadow that was Carbonel slipped silently down from the biscuit tin and rubbed against Rosemary, and his purring filled the little space under the currant bushes like an organ. A warm tongue licked her cheek.

‘Dear Carbonel!’ said Rosemary, putting her arms round him for a minute. ‘Of course we’ll do our best to take care of your kittens, but do you think –’

She broke off. The black cat had slipped from her and melted into the other shadows.

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6

The Royal Kittens

They did not ask that night if they might have the kittens after all. Rosemary felt that her mother was not in a‘yes-of-course-darling’ mood. She was still having trouble with a dress she was making, and only looked in to tell them to take the sausages on the cracked plate for supper.

‘Never mind,’ said John. ‘You can ask at breakfast tomorrow. Don’t forget, Carbonel said he was coming early.’

But Carbonel’s idea of early was rather different from theirs.

Rosemary was awakened next morning by a fly which buzzed persistently around her pillow. She brushed it away with a sleepy hand once or twice, and turned over; but the fly continued to buzz. Presently she became aware that it was not just buzzing. It was saying over and over again in a shrill, angry voice,‘For goodness’ sake, wake up!’

Rosemary opened one eye sleepily, and saw the fly a few inches away on the curve of her pillow. It was jumping up and down angrily on all of its six legs.

‘I am awake,’ said Rosemary sleepily, and gave a cavernous yawn.

The fly made a noise that sounded like an outraged squeak, and braced itself.

‘Don’t do that,’ it said in an agitated voice. ‘I once knew a fly who was swallowed by a yawn!’

‘How horrible!’ said Rosemary, thinking more of the yawner than the fly. She was wide awake now and sitting up.

‘Here am I, simply come to deliver a message to oblige, and my very life is threatened! First you go flapping like a windmill, and then –’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Rosemary humbly.

‘And you should be,’ said the fly a little more calmly. ‘Many people would just have flown off without delivering the message. But not me. I’m not that kind of fly. Luckily for you, I have a weakness for royalty.’

‘Royalty?’ interrupted Rosemary. ‘Is it from Carbonel? The message, I mean.’

The fly nodded importantly.

‘I was just to tell you, “We are here.” Kings talk like that, you know,’ it added condescendingly.

‘But where is “here”?’ asked Rosemary.

‘The greenhouse at the bottom of the garden. Oh! There you go again!’

Without warning, Rosemary had flung back the bedclothes and jumped out of bed. Buzzing angrily, the fly circled round her as she dressed.

‘I am sorry!’ she said again, ‘and of course I’m very grateful to you, but I must go and tell John at once. I think I’ve got some sugar somewhere.’

She felt in the pocket of her school blazer and brought out a rather dusty sugar lump, which she put on the dressing table. Then, in one movement, she pushed her toes into her slippers and her arms into her dressing gown.

John and Rosemary did not waste time dressing. They crept downstairs into the shining, early morning garden. It was so early that the shadows were still long and narrow, and the dew from the grass, which needed cutting, was cold on their bare ankles.

The birds and the small daylight creatures were all awake. The faint hum that Rosemary and John had noticed after drinking the red mixture was all around them, like the hum of a busy market place, but fainter and on a higher note. If they stood still, they could distinguish the little voices of which it was made. Only the birds sang loudly and excitedly of all the things they hoped to do on such a glorious day. Rosemary wanted to stop and listen, but John pulled her on.

The greenhouse was quite small. It had not been used for some time. The lock was broken, and several of the panes were cracked. The coloured tiles patterning the floor had come loose from their moorings and rocked beneath Rosemary’s and John’s feet when they walked on them. The greenhouse no longer held rows of pots, full of delicate flowers. There was only one remaining climbing plant which had run riot over the walls and roof. Mrs Brown called it plumbago. It was flowering now, and great trusses of pale blue blossoms hung among the dark green leaves. John and Rosemary ran down the path and opened the door.

On the shelf which had once housed pots of geraniums and primulas and lacy ferns, before a curtain of blue flowers, sat Carbonel. Beside him was a snow-white Persian, and between them were two kittens, one coal-black with white paws and the other tortoise-shell. All four sat quite still with their tails wrapped neatly around their front paws from left to right. The children hesitated by the open door. A blue flower fell silently between the kittens, and the black one raised a paw as if to pat it.

‘Calidor!’ said Carbonel sternly, and the kitten instantly wrapped his tail round his paws again, as if that would keep them out of mischief.

‘Good morning, Rosemary. Good morning, John.’

‘Good morning,’ said the children together, and John, to his surprise, found himself adding, ‘Sir.’

‘My dear,’ said Carbonel, turning to the white cat. ‘I have great pleasure in presenting my two friends, John and Rosemary.’

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The white cat gazed at them with wide, faraway blue eyes and bowed her head graciously.‘My husband has often spoken of you. His friends will always be mine.’

‘Thank you,’ said John rather lamely.

‘Present the children, my love,’ said Blandamour. Carbonel bent his head in acknowledgement.

‘My son, Prince Calidor, and my daughter, Princess Pergamond. Make your bows, my children.’

The two kittens stood up, and with back legs splayed out and small tails erect, made rather wobbly bows. John bobbed his head, and Rosemary lifted the skirt of her nightdress and made a little curtsy.

‘I give my children into your care,’ said Carbonel. ‘Protect their nine lives as if they were your own. And you, my children, repeat the royal rules each day and put them into practice.’

‘Yes, Father,’ said the kittens in shrill chorus.

‘And obey John and Rosemary in all things.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Remember, they are in your charge and you are in theirs.’

‘Yes, Father.’

‘And when I come back, let me hear nothing to your discredit.’

The black kitten, whose eyes had wandered to the drifting blue flowers again, began to say‘Yes, Father,’ and hastily changed it to ‘No.’

Carbonel turned to Blandamour.‘My love, it is time for me to go. Come with me to the crossroads and see me on my way.’

The black cat jumped silently to the tiled floor and went out into the sunlit garden, and Blandamour followed. John and Rosemary, watching them leap to the top of the garden wall, ran to wave good-bye. Standing on the garden roller, their chins level with the top of the wall, they could see Carbonel and Blandamour growing smaller and smaller as they trotted along the wall. It skirted the end of the gardens of number one hundred, number ninety-nine and number ninety-eight. At number ninety-seven, the wall curved, and the two cats disappeared from view.

‘Well, that’s that!’ said John, jumping down from the roller and wiping the moss from his hands on to his pyjamas.

‘Come on. Let’s get back to the kittens. Aren’t they gorgeous!’ said Rosemary.

They ran back to the greenhouse. To their surprise, only the tortoise-shell kitten was to be seen. She was standing on her hind paws on a flower pot, peering into an old watering can.

‘Where’s the other one? Where’s Calidor?’ asked Rosemary, looking round anxiously.

‘He’s in here,’ said Pergamond in a muffled voice, because she was still peering into the can. ‘It sounds as though he’s paddling. Why don’t you answer, Calidor?’

There was a splash and a faint mew. John rushed to the watering can and, putting in his hand, lifted out a bedraggled kitten, dripping with dirty water and mewing pitifully.

‘You poor little thing!’ said Rosemary, trying to wipe off the slime with her nightdress.

But the kitten only whimpered,‘Where’s Woppit? Want Woppit!’

‘What on earth is Woppit?’ asked John.

‘Here be old Woppit, my pretty dears!’ said a voice behind them, and there in the doorway was a dusty, dishevelled, elderly tabby cat.

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‘Bother!’ said Pergamond crossly.

‘As if they could keep old Woppit away! “Too big for a nurse now,” they said. But I knows better! Me that’s looked after ’em since before their blessed blue eyes was open. They thought they’d hoodwinked old Woppit and whisked you away without her knowing. But I smells here, and I asks there, and sure enough, I’ve found my little furry sweetings! And where’s my precious princeling puss?’

All the time she was talking, Woppit was purring loudly and comfortably. But when she caught sight of Calidor, bedraggled and miserable in Rosemary’s lap, her untidy fur bristled with indignation.

‘What have the horrid humans been doing to you then, my pet? I knew it all along! I never did hold with humans!’

‘We aren’t wicked, even if we are humans!’ said John indignantly. ‘And we didn’t do anything!’

‘It was Calidor’s fault,’ said Pergamond virtuously. ‘We were hungry, and I only said I thought there might be sardines in the water at the bottom of the can, and he was looking to see, and he fell in. He was only doing this.’

She put her front paws on the rim of the can, and heaving her stumpy hind legs up the side, tried to stand on the rim. John’s hand shot out again just in time to stop her from falling in as her brother had done. He set her firmly down on the ground.

‘But there weren’t any sardines,’ said Calidor, who was beginning to revive. ‘Only a lot of smelly water.’ He sneezed violently. ‘I think I’ve lost a life,’ he went on with gloomy satisfaction. ‘You’ll catch it when Father hears!’

‘I’m hungry,’ mewed Pergamond. ‘I want my breakfast!’

‘Regular meals they’re used to, like any well brought-up kittens. There’s some people takes on a job without so much as knowing the first thing about it.’ Woppit looked sourly at John and Rosemary.

‘Look here,’ said John angrily, ‘are you suggesting that Rosie and I aren’t capable of looking after a couple of kittens?’

‘Well then, which of you is going to lick my little princeling clean? And no licking around the corners, mind!’

‘Lick him!’ said Rosemary in horror, looking at the kitten’s matted fur.

‘That’s what I said. You’ll never get him clean without. Either I licks, or you licks, and if I stays and licks, I stays for good!’ said Woppit. ‘Which is it to be?’

‘I should have thought a bath –’ began Rosemary. But at the word ‘bath’ the kittens set up such a mewing, and Woppit’s comforting was so noisy, that the children could not hear themselves speak. They slipped outside the greenhouse and shut the door behind them quite firmly.

‘Whew!’ said John. ‘I’m beginning to see what Carbonel means about the kittens being “high spirited”.’

‘Look here,’ interrupted Rosemary, ‘I think we should find Woppit very useful. After all, we can’t sit and hold their paws all day long.’

‘Yes, but I refuse to have an old tabby cat ordering me around,’ said John.

‘I don’t think she’ll try if we make her see that we only want to do our best for the kittens.’

‘Perhaps you’re right,’ said John. ‘Suppose I run back upstairs and get them some milk, and you see what you can do with old Woppit.’ John ran.

When Rosemary went back into the greenhouse, Woppit was already vigorously licking a sulky Calidor. She eyed Rosemary suspiciously, but she did not stop.

‘Please, Woppit,’ said Rosemary humbly, ‘John and I want you to stay and show us how to look after Prince Calidor and Princess Pergamond, if you will.’

With a practised paw, Woppit rolled over a protesting Calidor and went on licking. She said nothing, but there was the faint suggestion of a purr.

‘Please, Woppit!’ pleaded Rosemary.

‘I’ll think about it!’ said Woppit, as though it were a perfectly new idea of Rosemary’s. ‘I might do it, to oblige.’ But she went on licking the unhappy Calidor so vigorously that Rosemary felt quite sorry for him, and her purring settled down to a deep, contented hum.

At that moment, John burst in at the door.‘Here’s some milk, but I only just got out without being seen,’ he said. ‘I could hear your mother getting up. We’d better hurry.’

They put the saucer down, left Woppit in charge, closed the door of the greenhouse firmly and ran back to the house and breakfast.

7

Figg’s Bottom

‘Really, Rosie,’ said Mrs Brown. ‘It was naughty of you to say you would look after three cats without asking first!’

Breakfast had been reduced to eggshells and toast crumbs before they had brought up the subject.

‘I know, Mummy, I’m awfully sorry, but –’

‘It wasn’t Rosie’s fault,’ broke in John. ‘You see, the… the… person they belong to had to go away this morning urgently, and there wasn’t time.’

‘Butthree cats, dears!’

‘One cat and two kittens,’ pleaded Rosemary. ‘And if you would only come and see them, Mummy, you couldn’t say no!’

Mrs Brown tried to go on frowning, but the two pleading faces were too much for her, and presently she smiled.

‘All right,’ she said at last. ‘But if you want to keep them in the greenhouse, you must ask Mr Featherstone’s permission, and you must look after them yourselves.’

‘Of course we’ll look after them, won’t we, John? They are very special kittens, and we wouldn’t trust them to anyone else. May we go and ask permission this minute?’

The children ran downstairs to the ground floor flat, where they found Mr Featherstone shaving with an electric razor. When he heard them come in, he wheeled around, his razor buzzing in his hand like a wasp in a jam jar.

‘Good heavens, it’s young John! Rosemary told me you were coming. Glad to see you, my boy! Have a bull’s eye. You’ll find them somewhere about, on the bookcase I think. I’m afraid it’s a bit untidy.’

Rosemary felt that‘untidy’ hardly described it. They couldn’t find the bull’s eyes among the litter of things on the bookcase, but they ran them to earth at last behind the coal scuttle in a very sticky bag. Because of the bull’s eyes they explained the situation rather indistinctly. However, Mr Featherstone seemed to understand.

‘Three cats in the greenhouse?’ he said. ‘I don’t see why not. No geraniums, so why not kittens? I remember you always had a weakness for the creatures, Rosie. Listen, I’ve got to take the van into Broomhurst this afternoon. Suppose you and John come with me. I could drop you in the country at the end of the town somewhere, and pick you up on the way back. What do you say?’

John and Rosemary thought it was an excellent idea.

They spent the morning making the greenhouse comfortable for the kittens. Mrs Brown found them an old blanket and the lid of a cardboard box so they could make a bed. They stacked the old flower pots in a corner and swept the floor and dusted the shelves, to the indignation of a number of spiders and several wood lice. Woppit lay in the sun outside and slept, and the two kittens chased the broom and their own tails, until they, too, fell asleep.

‘I expect Blandamour will come to see them soon, and I should like it all to look its very nicest,’ said Rosemary, standing back to admire the effect.

‘Bless you, she wouldn’t notice!’ said Woppit from the doorway. ‘Them as lives in high places thinks high and is above such things. Not that it isn’t right and proper for the humble likes of you and me to do our best, for all that!’

John did not much care for being bracketed with Woppit as‘humble’, but, luckily, at that moment Mrs Brown arrived.

‘I thought that you and the cats might like some milk, and besides I want to be introduced,’ she said, setting down a tray. On it were two mugs, a saucer and a jug of milk.

‘The black one is Calidor and the other is Pergamond,’ said Rosemary, squatting down beside the ball that was two sleeping kittens.

‘The little dears!’ said her mother softly, stirring them gently with the toe of her shoe. Then she said, ‘I have your tea. I wanted to make some for Mr Featherstone – I’m sure he doesn’t look after himself properly – but he said he would get some in Broomhurst. If you ask him to put you down by the turning to Figg’s Bottom, you can go to Turley’s Farm and ask for some milk instead of carrying something to drink with you.’

‘Do you mean where we went last year after we picked wild daffodils, Mummy?’ asked Rosemary.

‘That’s it. I’m afraid the daffodil field has been built over now. There’s a new housing estate, but I think the farm is still there.’

‘It be!’ said Woppit unexpectedly, though of course only the children heard her. ‘I ought to know, seeing as my brother Tudge took on Turleys four years ago.’

When Mrs Brown had gone and both children and kittens were drinking their milk, she went on,‘Ah, if you should meet a cat with a torn ear and a walleye, it’ll be Tudge, sure enough. You can tell him he can come and see me if he likes,’ she went on graciously. ‘I dare say I shall be glad of a bit of company here.’

She looked rather disdainfully around the greenhouse as she spoke.

‘What colour is he?’ asked John.

‘Not to say one colour,’ said Woppit cautiously, ‘but a bit of most.’

‘We’ll look out for him,’ said Rosemary gravely.

‘I’ll pick you up about half past five,’ said Mr Featherstone, as they rattled cheerfully along in the van.

They passed the familiar outskirts of Fallowhithe and found themselves in the newly built housing estate. They passed the finished houses with new curtains at the windows and new babies asleep in new prams in the front gardens, and were soon in a road with half-built houses on either side.

‘Where shall we meet you?’ asked John.

‘The corner by the Figg’s Bottom signpost is as good a meeting place as any. It should be just around the bend when we leave the houses behind,’ said Mr Featherstone. But they did not leave the houses behind. A tide of new buildings seemed to be coming toward them.

‘Good heavens!’ said Mr Featherstone. ‘I’d no idea the Broomhurst houses had spread so far.’

‘It looks as though a couple more houses will join it up with Fallowhithe,’ said John.

Even as they looked, they saw a man pushing a wheelbarrow full of bricks along a plank over the remaining piece of open land, which they saw had the forlorn, naked look of all building sites before the work actually begins.

‘Anyway, there are still fields behind the houses on either side,’ said John.

The van slowed down and stopped at a turning which still had a country-lane look about it. There was a signpost at the corner which said: TO FIGG’S BOTTOM. The children got out.

John carried their tea in a knapsack.‘We’ll be waiting for you, and thank you for bringing us, sir!’ he said.

‘Enjoy yourselves!’ called Mr Featherstone as he let in the clutch, and they watched the van rattle off down the road.

John and Rosemary wandered off to the nearest half-built house and watched a man with no shirt and a very brown back carry a load of bricks up a ladder, and come down again with the empty hod. He stopped at the bottom.

‘Can you tell us if the houses will join up in the end?’ asked Rosemary. ‘I mean so that Fallowhithe and Broomhurst meet?’

The man looked up.‘Hallo, ducks!’ he said. ‘When we’ve finished they’ll join so neat as you won’t know where one begins and the other ends! Makes you think, don’t it?’

John agreed that it did.

‘If you ask me, the cats have moved in already,’ the man went on. ‘I’ve never seen so many. All over the place, they are!’

Even as he spoke, a great black animal with white paws padded silently across the half-built wall, gave them a searching look and disappeared the way it had come.

The man frowned.‘And it’s a funny thing,’ he went on, ‘but there’s a rubbish dump here already, even before anyone’s moved in. Beats me where it comes from. There’s even an old rocking chair.’ He jabbed his thumb over his shoulder.

‘Hey, Charlie!’ shouted a voice.

‘Okay, I’m coming,’ replied the man. ‘So long!’ he said. He winked cheerfully at Rosemary and went off whistling.

John and Rosemary turned and wandered off in the direction he had pointed out to them with his thumb. In a field, beyond a cement mixer, was a pile of old tins and some worn-out shoes, and beside it stood a rocking chair.

‘I wonder who put it there?’ said Rosemary. ‘It doesn’t look broken to me.’

‘Oh, never mind,’ said John impatiently. ‘We haven’t come all this way to examine old rubbish heaps! I’m hungry. I vote we go on down the lane and have our tea as soon as we find a good place. We can go on to Turley’s afterwards and get some milk.’

So they turned down the lane leading to Figg’s Bottom, but as it happened they never reached Turley’s Farm. They walked on in a leisurely way. With nothing but the winding road ahead and fields on either side, it was easy to forget the building behind them. They stopped to listen to two sparrows gossiping on the hedge. A snail was makingrude remarks to a blackbird from the safety of an overhanging stone. Once a rabbit popped its head through the bars of a stile.

‘Humans!’ it said in disgust, and popped back again. John stood on the stile to call to it, but said instead, ‘I’m sure I can hear a stream. Let’s go and find it.’ So they crossed the stile and followed a path through the meadow on the other side.

They found the stream without much difficulty. Its clear, cider-coloured water rippled gently over a pebbly bed. They took off their shoes and splashed about happily. Rosemary picked a bunch of water forget-me-nots and wild peppermint. They tried to dam a tiny tributary, and let the piled-up water join the main stream again with a whoosh!

It was not till some time later, with toes and fingers very pink and crinkly, that they sat down in the middle of a little plank bridge. With their legs dangling, they ate tomato sandwiches and homemade rock cakes. They were facing upstream, and when they had nearly finished, John said suddenly,‘Someone must be sailing toy boats higher up! Look, there’s a big one just coming around the corner.’

There certainly was a black thing, which looked like a toy boat, drifting toward them.

‘Let’s catch it when it gets to the bridge!’ said Rosemary.

They lowered themselves down into the stream in readiness. But it was not a boat. It was a shoe, a very large one with a brass buckle that needed sewing on again. They caught it as it drifted under the bridge.

‘Let’s wade upstream and see if we can find the owner. Whoever owns it must have enormous feet!’ said John.

They lifted the dripping shoe out of the water and started to wade upstream.

8

The Rocking Chair

They splashed their way along very pleasantly for some distance, until, coming out of a green tunnel made by the overhanging branches of willow and hazel, they were startled to find themselves in the sunshine again, and almost on top of the owner of the shoe.

‘Mrs Cantrip!’ said John and Rosemary together. For that is who it was. She was sitting on a rock with the remaining shoe beside her and with her large feet dangling in the water. Beside her, a little higher up the bank, was a small, neat, plump person. She had round cheeks, she wore a round felt hat and a neat tweed suit, and she sat very upright, with a bunch of what looked like green leaves in her lap.

‘It’s you, is it?’ said Mrs Cantrip sourly.

‘We rescued your shoe for you,’ said John politely, holding it out to her. ‘It was floating downstream.’

‘Interfering again!’ said the old woman. ‘It was floating lovely!’

‘But we thought whoever it belonged to would want it,’ said John in surprise.

‘And we didn’t even know it was yours,’ added Rosemary. ‘You couldn’t get home without it.’

‘That’s all you know. There’s more ways of getting about than walking,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘Besides, I know where there’s another lovely pair of shoes for the taking, and no questions asked.’

The little person leaned forward and said eagerly,‘If you mean the ones on the rubbish heap where we left the –’ She broke off suddenly and clapped her hand over her mouth.

At the same time, Mrs Cantrip deliberately threw her other shoe into the stream with a loud splash.‘You can fish that out, as you’re so fond of finding things,’ she said rudely.

Red with annoyance, John splashed over and pulled out the second shoe.

‘I think you are very ungrateful!’ said Rosemary hotly.

‘It was entirely my fault, dears!’ said the roundabout person. ‘I’m sure Katie is very grateful, really. Such a character! She was trying to stop me saying something when she threw her shoe into the stream. My foolish tongue, you know.’ Then, turning to Mrs Cantrip, ‘Such nicely spokenchildren. Do introduce me, please, Katie dear!’

Mrs Cantrip sniffed.

‘Boy nuisance!’ she said, nodding toward John. ‘And girl nuisance!’

Rosemary turned her back on Mrs Cantrip and said,‘I’m Rosemary, this is my friend John, and we aren’t a nuisance, at least not on purpose.’

‘And my name is Dibdin,’ said the little person, ‘Miss Dorothy Dibdin.’

‘You aren’t Mrs Cantrip’s new lodger, are you?’ asked Rosemary suddenly.

‘Why, how clever of you!’ said Miss Dibdin warily. ‘Just for the summer holidays, you know. Between you and me, it’s not very comfortable, but it has its advantages. It was such a stroke of luck finding it. I always like to have a hobby during the summer – I am a schoolteacher, you know – and Mrs Cantrip is teaching me to –’

She broke off again as Mrs Cantrip burst into a very loud, artificial cough.‘There I go again,’ she continued. ‘But no harm done. Such a lovely day! We came here to enjoy the country, to meet some friends and pick a bunch of flowers. You promised to show me where I could find that particularly damaging dodder, dear,’ she said to Mrs Cantrip, and at the same time she rose to her feet and dusted her skirt.

Mrs Cantrip grunted, but she heaved herself up, pushed her bare feet into her wet shoes with complete unconcern, and muttering something about‘Bogshott Wood’, started to climb the bank, with her shoes squelching at every step.

‘Good afternoon, children,’ said Miss Dibdin briskly, and followed her up the bank.

‘Exactly as though we were six-year-olds,’ said John, as they watched the two cross the field, the one so tall and untidy and the other so short and trim.

‘Whatever can Mrs Cantrip be teaching her?’ said Rosemary.

‘Search me,’ said John. ‘But you can bet she’s up to no good. Well, it’s nothing to do with us. Come on. We’ve left our picnic things and shoes by the bridge.’

Since they had reached the bridge earlier in the afternoon, all the little animal voices had been hidden by the chuckling of the stream. Standing on the top of the bank, they became aware of a bird sitting on a swaying twig and calling,‘No good! No good!’

‘Do you mean Mrs Cantrip?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Ugly pair! Ugly pair!’ sang the bird. Then, with a frightened whirr of wings, it darted off, just as a cat came dashing down the field with three others in hot pursuit. The frightened animal found himself in the loop of the stream. He paused, looking for some way to cross, but the hesitation lost him the advantage, and his pursuers were upon him. With a yowl and a screech, what had been four cats became one threshing, rolling ball.

‘The poor thing!’ cried Rosemary in distress. ‘It’s three against one! The great cowards! Oh, do be careful, John!’ she said, for John had taken off his coat, and with some idea of protecting his hands, flung it over the spitting threshing animals.

Whether it was the coat that was responsible or not, the rolling cats, who had been steering a zigzag course toward the stream, reached the edge of the bank, and cats, coat and all bounced down the bank and fell into the water with a splash. There was a screech from all four animals. Then three of them scrambled out and, even faster than they had come, dashed away in the direction of the road, leaving a trail of wet grass behind. The fourth cat stood shivering on the bank. John and Rosemary ran toward him.

‘You poor thing!’ said Rosemary.

‘Let’s rub him with my blazer,’ said John. ‘It’s so wet already that more water won’t hurt! Keep still old chap!’

‘Thank you kindly,’ said the cat, through the folds of John’s blazer. ‘If there’s one thing I can’t abide, it’s water.’ An untidy head emerged from the navy-blue flannel. ‘Me that was ship’s cat for two years on theMary Jane. Trawling, she was.’

John interrupted.‘Rosie! A walleye and a torn ear!’ He stood up with the coat in his hands. ‘And not one colour, but a bit of most! You must be Tudge!’

The strange cat shook his wet paws in turn.‘What if I be? Personal remarks is rude!’

‘I’m sorry!’ said John. ‘But Woppit told us about you.’

‘Her,’ said Tudge with great scorn. ‘So high and mighty since she took up with royalty, she is, I wonder she still remembers me.’

‘Oh, but she does!’ said Rosemary. ‘She asked us to give you a message if we met you. She said you could come and see her if you liked, and we should love you to. You see, she is helping us look after the two royal kittens. Why, what’s the matter?’

The cat looked furtively around and beckoned them down to the water’s edge.

‘It do be safer to talk here, though damp to the paws. The water makes such a swirligiggle we aren’t like to be overheard by them as means them precious kitlings no good. Listen here. For why do you think I were being chased, like as if I’d been caught with cream on my paws in the dairy?’

Tudge did not wait for them to answer.‘Me, Turley’s cat on Turley’s land, going about my lawful business! I’ll tell you for why. Because I challenged them Broomhurst animals, polite but firm, as is my job. Talking they was, to two more hearing humans.’

‘Hearing humans?’

‘Them as hears us animals talking, like you, of course. And I didn’t like the look of them two, neither. One tall, thin and untidy as a scarecrow, and the other round and plump, like a cat full of cream.’

John and Rosemary looked at one another.

‘Did you hear what they were talking about?’ asked John.

‘Well, I’m not a one to go poking into other people’s affairs. But as I comes up, the plump one says, “How thrilling! Do let’s go!” and claps her hands, and the skinny one says, “We may as well see what she’s up to!” And then one of them cats ups and says, “Her Royal Greyness says you must be there by midnight, and not a word to anyone.” “But how would we get there?” says Roundabout. “The way we came here of course!” says Skinny, sharp like. And then they sees me standing there, and I’d barely given the usual challenge when them animals were on me.’

‘Did you hear anything else?’ asked John.

‘Only Skinny cackling and Roundabout saying, “Dear me, dear me.” Then I broke away and she called after ’em, “Tell Her Royal Greyness we’ll be there!” and she cackled again. You know the rest, thanking you kindly,’ said Tudge.

‘What do you think they were talking about?’ said John curiously. ‘And who is Her Royal Greyness?’

‘Grisana, Queen of the Broomhurst cats, smoke-grey she is, and a proper fierce one, although she seems so gentle. Not like our lovely Blandamour. But when the Kings get the Summons, it’s the Queens who reign till they come home. It’s my belief there’s mischief brewing. So cock-a-hoop them Broomhurst animals is. Singing rude songs and shouting insults at honest, workaday Fallowhithe animals. When the last house goes up, then look out for trouble!’

‘What do you mean?’ Rosemary asked.

‘I think I know,’ said John. ‘You mean when the last house is built that joins Broomhurst with Fallowhithe.’

‘Ah,’ said Tudge. ‘No dividing line between the two there won’t be. And with King Castrum off to the Summoning, and no one to keep them Broomhurst cats in order, or his Queen who’s left in charge, there’ll be trouble right enough.’

‘Good heavens!’ said John. ‘Listen, Tudge, if you hear anything more, will you let us know?’

‘I will!’ promised Tudge. ‘And guard them precious kitlings as if they were gold. You can’t be too careful!’

‘Oh dear!’ said John. ‘I wish we hadn’t left them for so long.’

‘Don’t you think we ought to be going?’ said Rosemary anxiously.

‘Bother! My watch has stopped,’ said John. ‘I think I’ve got it wet. We musn’t be late for Mr Featherstone. We have to get our shoes from the bridge. Let’s get going.’

John and Rosemary said good-bye to Tudge and splashed their way back to the little bridge. As soon as they found their shoes, they hurried back to the signpost, but there was no sign of Mr Featherstone.

The builders had finished for the day and gone home, so they examined a half-built house and tried to imagine it being lived in.

‘Let’s go and look at the cement mixer,’ said John, so they went into the field. John found the cement mixer enthralling, but to Rosemary it was rather dull, so she wandered off, and found herself by the rubbish heap once again.

‘I can’t see Mrs Cantrip in any of those shoes,’ she thought. ‘Not with high heels and open toes.’ Then she looked at the rocking chair which was still standing beside it. ‘I wonder who left it here?’ she said to herself.

She rocked it idly with one toe. It did not seem broken, so she sat on the seat. She began rocking gently to and fro. It made a pleasant little breeze, and she went a little higher. As she rocked rhythmically to and fro, she said idly,‘Rocking chair, rocking chair,’ in time to the movement, and then thinking a little anxiously about the kittens, added, ‘I wish I was home. I wish I was there. Oh, that rhymes!’ And she said again, in time to the rocking,

‘Rocking chair, rocking chair.

I wish I was home, I wish I was there!’

And because the chant went so well with the movement of the chair, she said it a third time, rocking higher and higher, and then she gave the chair a tremendous push forward.

To her complete surprise, the chair rose steeply into the air, then banked sharply, nearly throwing her out. She held on firmly, too astonished to call out.

Down below, John suddenly looked up and saw Rosemary, her feet curled around the front legs of the rocking chair and plaits flapping wildly. The chair righted itself and seemed to be flying steadily in the direction of Fallowhithe. He thought he saw her lips moving as she turned to look back at him, but he was too far away to hear what she was saying. But he saw her point behind him toward Figg’s Bottom.

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‘Rosie, come back!’ he called, although he knew it was useless. He ran desperately in the direction the chair was taking, with some wild idea of keeping pace with it. But when he turned to look where Rosemary was pointing he stopped dead.

Mrs Cantrip and Miss Dibdin were panting up the hill from Figg’s Bottom. They looked up at the disappearing chair and waved angrily.

‘Stop thief! Stop thief!’ called Miss Dibdin shrilly.

They had not seen John, so he slipped back to the half-built house, and hid in what was going to be the kitchen. He held his breath as the hurrying feet came near. He could distinguish the flap, flap of Mrs Cantrip’s shoes and the click, click of Miss Dibdin’s neat, high heels. As they drew level with his hiding place, the footsteps stopped.

‘You must wait a minute, Katie. I’ve got a stone in my shoe, and if you think I’m going to run all the way home to Fairfax Market, you’re very much mistaken,’ Miss Dibdin said tartly. ‘You must admit it’s a pretty how-do-you-do. No rocking chair to take us home and no money for a bus,thanks to your saying witches don’t carry handbags.’

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‘It’s them children again, I’m sure of it!’ growled Mrs Cantrip. ‘I knew there’d be trouble the minute I set eyes on ’em.’

John could hear the sound of an approaching car, but did not dare to look up to see if it was Mr Featherstone.

‘And now how are we to get there tomorrow night, I should like to know?’ Miss Dibdin asked. ‘The highest building in Broomhurst you said it was. We shall just have to hurry up with that broom. Oh, I know you can’t do anything, but you can tell me how to finish it.’

‘What, both of us ride tandem on a young broom that’s not been broken in?’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘Madness, I call it! You’d ruin its temper for life. But we’ll get there somehow, if it’s only to get even with those children. Not that it isn’t as nice a bit of mischief as I’ve seen in a month of wet Mondays. Don’t be all day with that shoe!’

‘Well, I suppose there’s nothing for it,’ said Miss Dibdin briskly. ‘We shall just have to walk the six miles home. You can teach me that handy little spell for turning milk sour as we go.’

As John listened to their retreating footsteps, a car passed his hiding place and drew up a little farther on. He looked cautiously over the wall. The two women had started off at a rapid pace. He saw with relief that Mr Featherstone was standing by the van. He raced up to him.

‘Hello!’ he said. ‘Where’s Rosie? Had a good time?’

‘Super!’ said John. ‘Rosie… er… was given a lift home by someone she knows,’ he said lamely.

‘Really? How very strange of her,’ said Mr Featherstone in a puzzled voice. ‘Have you two had a row? You sound rather gloomy. Well, if she gets back safely I suppose that’s all that matters.’

John most heartily agreed.

It was a silent drive home. John was far too busy with his thoughts for conversation. Quite clearly, Mrs Cantrip, although she had retired from being a witch herself, was instructing Miss Dibdin, and both of them were planning mischief with the cats of Broomhurst. Worse still was his anxiety about Rosemary.

When they reached home, John thanked Mr Featherstone and rushed to the greenhouse to see if the kittens were safe. He burst in at the door.

‘Are they safe, Woppit?’ he asked. ‘The kittens, I mean?’

‘They’re safe enough,’ said Woppit.

‘Look here, no matter what happens don’t let them out of your sight for a minute,’ said John. ‘There may be trouble brewing. I’ll come and explain as soon as I can, but I must go now. I know I can trust you!’

‘Trust me?’ said Woppit indignantly. ‘And who better, I’d like to know. To the last whisker!’

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9

The Walled Garden

Rosemary had seen Mrs Cantrip and Miss Dibdin burst into a run when they caught sight of the rocking chair climbing steeply into the air, but when she saw John hide himself in the half-built house, she gave a sigh of relief. It gave her something else to think about besides the dizzy feeling in her head and the sudden emptiness of her inside.

‘This must have been what Mrs Cantrip meant when she said, “There’s other ways than walking.”’ Rosemary said to herself. ‘I don’t expect I’ve anything to be frightened about,’ she went on severely, taking a firm grip of the arms of the chair. ‘I suppose because I said “I wish I was home,” and three times, too, that’s where the chair is taking me. How surprised Mum will be!’

By this time, she could bring herself to look down without feeling giddy. Behind, she could see the tip of the pink wedge that was the new houses leading from Broomhurst, and the thought that John was there gave her courage. Suddenly, roofs and chimneys swirled and dipped beneath her. Few people looked up, but those who did scarcely had time to rub their eyes and look again before the rocking chair was too far away to be distinguished.

The chair flew over the railway station where, such a short time ago, Rosemary and her mother had met John. A curious swallow swooped alongside.‘Flying humans! What next?’ it said, and swooped away again.

Then, Rosemary noticed with alarm that the chair was losing height.‘My goodness, we’re going down! Chair do be careful!’

The rows of crooked chimneys seemed to be coming straight up at her. She shut her eyes tightly, but even so, she had a sinking, going-down-in-a-lift feeling. Then there was a violent bump, and the chair overturned, throwing her in a heap on to a patch of long grass. She opened her eyes and sat up, surprised to find that, except for a few bruises, she was none the worse for her fall. She looked around cautiously.

She was in a little garden. It was very small and surrounded on three sides by a high wall, with broken glass along the top. The fourth side was the back of a very shabby, small house. She got up and looked at the flower beds which ran around the little patch of grass.‘It’s a very strange garden!’ Rosemary said. It was very neat, but there were no flowers, as she knew them.

‘Somebody has actually been growing weeds on purpose!’ There was a clump of stinging nettles carefully staked and tied, and another of hemlock, and there was a neat edging of dandelions. There were a great many plants that Rosemary did not recognize, nearly all of them with small, greenish flowers.

‘That bush is deadly nightshade! I know it is, because the berries are poisonous, and someone has put a net over it to keep off the birds, just as you do with raspberries!’ There was a clumsy garden seat made from packing cases. A seed box stood beside it with a label which said, MANDRAKE SEEDLINGS. SPARROWS KEEP OFF.

Rosemary watched a bee back clumsily out of a foxglove bell, and for the first time noticed the hum of a small thatched beehive. It stood in an angle of the garden wall. The bee hummed a little song which sounded like this:

‘Busycum, buzzycum,

Nectar and honeycomb.

Lilac and lime on the tree,

Roses and lilies

And daffydown dillies,

Are not for the likes of me.

Not for a witch’s bee!’

‘Excuse me,’ said Rosemary, ‘but can you tell me whose garden this is?’

The bee took no notice, but buzzing busily, pushed itself into the next foxglove bell. When it backed out again, it went on humming its song as though she had not spoken.

‘Busycum, buzzycum,

Pains in the tummy cum,

Sowthistle, poisonous pea,

Henbane and hellebore,

That’s what I’m looking for,

That’s for the likes of me,

Food for a witch’s bee!’

‘Of course I do like your song, butplease tell me where I am!’ said Rosemary once more.

The bee stood on the lip of the foxglove bell, which dipped with its weight, and paused to clean its back legs.

‘A hearing human, eh?’ it said. ‘I’ve heard of ’em of course, but never met one before. Full of surprises, this garden is. Whose is it? That’d be telling. Where are you? Where you’d much better not be!’ And it boomed off, still humming to itself, ‘Busycum, buzzycum.’

‘Oh, dear!’ said Rosemary. ‘That’s not much help. I expect I had better knock at the door. It’s going to be awfully difficult to explain how I got here.’

She tiptoed up to what was clearly the back door of the house and knocked. While she was waiting for an answer, she looked through the window beside it. There was a window box on the sill, full of brightly coloured toadstools. The room inside looked unpleasantly familiar. There was still no answer, so she tried the door and, finding it unlocked, tiptoed in.

‘Oh, dear!’ said Rosemary for a third time. ‘Itis Mrs Cantrip’s kitchen! How silly I have been! When I said “home”, the rocking chair took me to the only one it knew!

‘Is there anyone here?’ she called in a rather wobbly voice. There was no answer. ‘Well, there couldn’t be,’ she said with relief, ‘because it will take them a long time to walk all the way back from Figg’s Bottom.’

Rosemary looked around the kitchen curiously. It was much the same as the last time she had seen it. It was quite tidy. The hearth was swept and the fire banked up. Dandelions, which had decorated the table, had been changed for a bunch of dead nettles. On the rag rug by the hearth lay a long wooden stick and a pile of twigs. Then her eyes were caught by a small cupboard hanging on the wall by the fireplace.

The door was open, so she went over and looked in. On the top shelf were sugar and tea, cornflakes and nutmeg, and all the usual things found in a cupboard. But a screw of paper caught Rosemary’s eye on the lower shelf. ‘It looks like the Prism Powder Mrs Cantrip left in her apron pocket.’

Next to it was an old can, which had a label gummed crookedly on to the side which said, DISAPPEARING POTION, but it was empty. Next to that was a jam jar with some purple liquid at the bottom, labelled FLYING PHILTRE, USE SPARINGLY, and beside that was a pickle jar with a few grains of coarse powder at the bottom. The label on this said MINUSCULE MAGIC.

‘So Mrs Cantrip really did have some magic left over!’ said Rosemary.

As she spoke, she heard the Market Hall clock strike six o’clock. ‘I must start home. It will take me ages to walk to Cranshaw Road!’ She went through to the second room which opened on to the street and tried the door. To her horror it was locked! There was no key to be seen.

‘I expect Mrs Cantrip has taken it with her. Whatever shall I do?’ She ran to the window which looked on to the street, but it had been built as a shop window and it did not open. She walked back to the kitchen slowly as the situation dawned on her. There was no way out, and at any minute Mrs Cantrip and her companion might be back.

She looked out of the kitchen window which opened on to the little garden. The rocking chair was on the small square of grass. It looked rather forlorn, lying on its side by the skid marks it had made when it landed.

Rosemary ran out. She picked it up and dusted it with her handkerchief.‘Rocking chair,’ she pleaded, ‘it was very clever of you to bring me here. I expect it is your home, but I want desperately to get tomy home in Cranshaw Road. Please, will you take me there now? If you will, I’ll polish you up so beautifully that the Queen herself would be proud to sit in you!’

She was not sure if she imagined it, but she thought the chair gave a faint rock of its own accord.

‘Now I’ll try and do just what I did before. I said a rhyme, I remember, three times over, and all the while I was rocking.’

Rosemary sat herself in the chair and put her hands over her eyes to help her think, and began to rock. It was a little while before she could make her whirling thoughts obey her.‘It’s not a very good rhyme,’ she said at last, ‘but it will have to do. I can’t think of a better one.’

Anyone who has had to make up a rhyme with the words‘one hundred and one’ in it, will realize her difficulty. She rocked the chair steadily, and at last she gripped the arms firmly and said:

‘Please take me home to Cranshaw Road.

One hundred and one is my abode.

My bedroom window’s open wide,

So kindly take me right inside.’

As she got to the last line, she heard footsteps coming along the pavement on the other side of the wall. It sounded like two people, both of them limping a little.

‘It’s Mrs Cantrip! Someone must have given them a lift!’ said Rosemary to herself. ‘I must hurry!’

She rocked higher and faster, saying the rhyme for a second time. As she reached the last line, she heard a key grating in the lock. It made such a noise that it was clearly as large as a church key. The lock needed oiling.

She said the last line for the third time, and just as the door opened on its creaking hinge, the rocking chair rose from the ground with a swoop, spiralling steeply. She was just wondering if she ought to have added the postal number to the address when it straightened out. She opened her eyes and looked down. Already the little walled garden was no bigger than a green pocket handkerchief beneath her. Straight as an arrow, the chair headed for Cranshaw Road.

10

Making Plans

John and Mrs Brown ate a silent, uncomfortable supper by themselves. He was a truthful boy and, being unable to think of anything better to say, repeated his story of someone having given Rosemary an unexpected lift. The unexpected part was certainly true.

‘But who could it have been?’ asked Mrs Brown anxiously for the tenth time. ‘It’s so unlike Rosemary!’ She broke off, to John’s intense relief, startled by a crash from Rosemary’s bedroom. The room was not much larger than a cupboard, and its only door led into the sitting room. John dropped his pudding spoon and rushed in.

As Rosemary said later, the rocking chair was‘willing but not very good at landing’. When John flung the door open, the chair was lying on its side, and Rosemary, looking slightly dazed, was picking herself up from the floor. With great presence of mind, he pushed the chair behind the door, and stood so that, as far as possible, it was hidden from Mrs Brown. Then, winking violently in an effort to convey that she had better think up something quickly, he said loudly, ‘Hello, Rosie!’

For once Mrs Brown was extremely cross.

‘Rosemary! You are a very naughty girl! I can’t think why you should do something so childish as to hide in your bedroom while I have been so anxious. And what possessed you to leave Mr Featherstone and come home with someone else?’

‘I’m very sorry, Mummy,’ said Rosemary penitently. ‘I really didn’t mean you to be anxious. It was all a mistake, honestly. I promise I won’t ever do it again. Please, just this once,’ she went on earnestly, ‘will you trust me and not ask questions? It is a most particular secret!’

Mrs Brown looked at her daughter’s pleading face for an anxious moment. Then at last she said, ‘You promise the secret is not wrong?’

‘Promise faithfully!’ said Rosemary.

‘Very well, dear. I will trust you. But you must not be inconsiderate either. You have been rude to Mr Featherstone as well as making me anxious. But come and have your supper now, Rosie. It’s in the oven. You must be starving.’

‘Are the kittens all right?’ asked Rosemary, between mouthfuls of fish pie.

‘Right as rain,’ said John. ‘But I think we ought to feed them as soon as possible,’ he went on, winking violently again, hoping that Rosemary would understand that he wanted to talk to her privately.

They had to help wash up after supper, but as soon as the front door closed behind them, Rosemary told John her adventures. He listened open-mouthed.

‘I was in such a tizzy to get away from Mrs Cantrip’s garden that I forgot I wouldn’t be able to explain how I came to be in my bedroom without going through the sitting room. We shall have to think of some way to hide the chair, or Mum will want to know where it came from.’

‘Smuggle it down to the Green Cave for the moment, and cover it with leaves,’ John suggested. ‘ButI’ve got something to tellyou!’

When John described the conversation he had overheard when he was hiding in the half-built house, it was Rosemary’s turn to be impressed.

‘Thank goodness they didn’t catch you!’ she said. ‘Well, it’s quite clear that Mrs Cantrip and that Dibdin woman are hatching some plot with the Queen of the Broomhurst cats. Tudge said that trouble was brewing.’

‘And he thought it was against Fallowhithe!’

‘If they’re meeting tomorrow night on top of the tallest building in Broomhurst, it must be on that new ten-storey block of offices that Mr Featherstone told us about. I’d give my boots for us to be behind a chimney so that we could listen to what they’re up to.’

‘John!’ said Rosemary excitedly. ‘Why shouldn’t we go?’

‘But they’re meeting in the middle of the night. How could we get on to the roof ? The place would be locked up!’

‘Well, said Rosemary, ‘as Mrs Cantrip said, “there’s other ways than walking”!’

‘John whistled. ‘Do you mean the rocking chair? Do you think it could carry us both?’

‘We could ask it in the morning. I think it’s had enough for one day. Come on, let’s feed the kittens.’

It was growing dusk when they reached the greenhouse. When they opened the door an unexpected sight greeted them. Blandamour was sitting on an upturned flower pot, and at her feet were the two kittens, both sitting up as straight and still as their royal mother.

Woppit looked on with her head on one side and a doting expression on her brindled face.‘Hush!’ she said to John and Rosemary. ‘The little darlings is saying their lessons!’

In small, piping voices the kittens were repeating:

‘No paw or whisker in the dish,

Whether meat or fowl or fish…’

Calidor’s voice faltered when a delicious tendril of haddock smell wafted from the plate Rosemary held and tickled his nose.

‘Calidor, pay attention!’ said Blandamour. ‘Each awkward…’

The black kitten sighed, but went on:

‘Each awkward bone be sure to gnaw

Upon the plate, not on the floor.

Lap your milk from out the platter

From the edge, and do not scatter

Drops from either bowl or mug

On quarried floor or silken rug.

Steady lapping, rhythmic, quiet,

Is correct for milky diet.

After food, wash paws and face,

And don’t forget to purr your grace.’

‘Very good, my children. Now you may eat,’ said Blandamour. ‘But remember what you have repeated. Greetings to you, John and Rosemary. My children are well, and if they are closely confined, no doubt you have your reasons!’

‘We certainly have, Your Majesty!’ said John. ‘It’s like this…’

Blandamour listened in silence. Only once did she interrupt to summon a grizzled old tabby cat with four white stockings who was sitting in the shadow of the bushes outside.

‘Merbeck, my cousin and chief councillor,’ she said. ‘He too must hear your tale.’

When the children had finished, she bowed her beautiful white head.

‘You have done well and bravely, and I am grateful. But it will need more courage still to fly to Cat Country and overhear Grisana’s schemings. It may even be dangerous. Merbeck, should we not send a pair of animals instead?’

Merbeck shook his grizzled head.‘I think not, Your Majesty. Grisana is wily in her wickedness. Her sentry will be on the alert for foreign cats, but flying humans they will not expect.’

‘Couldn’t I go too, oh, couldn’t I?’ asked Calidor, standing with his short legs spread out and his tail waving angrily. ‘I’d show ’em!’

‘Me too!’ said Pergamond shrilly.

‘No, my son,’ said Blandamour. ‘One day when you are older you will have many chances to prove how brave you are. Until we find out Grisana’s plans, we do not know where the danger lies.’

‘Therefore, we must go warily and keep our eyes and ears open. Above all, guard the royal kittens!’ said Merbeck. ‘Tomorrow we will come again and hear what you have discovered, and may good luck go with you!’

11

Cat Country

Rosemary kept her promise to the chair the next morning. While John mended the lock of the greenhouse, she carried dusters and furniture polish down to the Green Cave. She rubbed away until her arms ached and the curves of the dark wood of the chair gleamed with little, bright reflections.

‘The Queen herself really would be proud to sit in you now, just as I promised,’ said Rosemary, sitting back on her heels to admire her handiwork.

The chair gave a little rock which seemed to show it was pleased. Or had she caught it with her duster?

‘And I know a real queen who might come and sit in you,’ went on Rosemary. There was another little rock. ‘A cat queen!’

The rocking stopped abruptly.

‘A beautiful, snow-white queen who needs your help,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘Dear rocking chair, you carried me home so splendidly, won’t you help us again? You see –’ Once more she explained about the meeting on the tallest building in Broomhurst.

‘Roofs and walls are Cat Country at night,’ she said. ‘The place will be locked. Our only way to get there is by flying, if only you will take us. I’ll make you –’ she thought quickly – ‘an antimacassar! You know, one of those things to hang over the back – an embroidered one. I promise!’

Rosemary held her breath. There was a moment’s pause, and then the chair gave another little rock.

‘I knew I could rely on you!’ she whispered, and ran back to the flat to get her nightdress case. It would make an excellent chair-back, she felt. Armed with needles and coloured thread, she went back to the greenhouse to tell John of her success.

It was beginning to rain. Woppit was asleep in a corner, her untidy whiskers twitching as she chased dream mice around a shadowy dream cellar. The kittens were playing with something that rolled obligingly round the floor, and John was whistling through his teeth and fiddling with the lock which he had taken to pieces.

‘Good!’ he said absently, when Rosemary told him that she thought the rocking chair would take them.

It was almost cosy in the greenhouse, with the raindrops plopping on the glass roof. They worked away in friendly silence. Rosemary was sewing‘R.C.’ for Rocking Chair in green chain stitch on the nightdress case. She looked up and bit off her thread. ‘Can you really put it together again?’

John looked with a puzzled frown at the bits of lock which he had laid out on the floor.

‘If two screws hadn’t vanished into thin air, I could,’ he snapped. ‘You might try to find them instead of sitting there doing nothing.’

‘I’ve been working twice as hard as you!’ said Rosemary. ‘I’ve been making up a flying rhyme for tonight all the time I’ve been sewing!’ But she put down her work and looked for the screws. ‘They can’t have vanished,’ she said. ‘Have you seen them, kittens?’

Pergamond and Calidor were staring with deep interest at a curled-up wood louse. They looked up, to the wood louse’s relief.

‘Screws?’ asked Calidor. ‘What’s screws?’

‘Do they roll?’ asked Pergamond.

Rosemary nodded.

‘Then they’re down there,’ said Calidor, peering through the pierced pattern of the iron grille covering the pipes under the floor which once had warmed the greenhouse.

‘We were pretending they were mice,’ said Pergamond, ‘so they had to go down a hole.’

Both kittens peered down into the darkness. They could see the hot water pipes, but not the screws.

‘Come on, Rosie, help me pull up the grille!’ said John. They pulled and pulled, but it would not budge.

‘Rusted in, I suppose,’ said John disgustedly. ‘Of all the stupid interfering animals!’

The kittens hung their heads. Rosemary scooped them up and put one on each shoulder. They were so very soft and light! She listened to the quick beating of their hearts.

‘Don’t be cross with them,’ she said, and two small rough tongues rasped her hands gratefully as she lifted them into her lap. ‘They didn’t mean to be a nuisance. I’ll hold them here and keep them out of mischief while you finish.’ The kittens quarrelled drowsily in the hollow of her skirt. John put the lock together again and screwed it to the door. The key turned silently in the newly-oiled works.

‘It looks splendid to me!’ said Rosemary hopefully.

‘My good girl, a lock on the door is not much use without the plate on the doorpost for it to fit into!’

They looked up as footsteps scrunched toward them on the gravel path. It was Mr Featherstone.

‘Hello! I thought I would find you here. Well, this makes a very snug little kitten garden. I’ve been suggesting to your mother that, as it’s wet, we might all four of us go to the pictures this afternoon. There’s a very funny film at the Parthenon, I’m told. What do you say?’

Of course they both said yes.

‘Good. Can’t stop now, see you later,’ said Mr Featherstone, who went whistling down the path. Both John and Rosemary were glad for something to fill in the time before their perilous adventure that night. It seemed to grow more perilous the more they thought about it.

‘We can buy a couple more screws on our way home,’ said John.

‘Come on, it’s time we got cleaned up,’ said Rosemary, looking at his oily hands. ‘We can wedge the door shut till this evening.’

The film was so funny that they saw it twice, quite forgetting about the screws, and when they came blinking out into the daylight with their cheeks still creased with laughter, the shops had closed.

‘Well, the door will just have to stay wedged until tomorrow,’ said John. ‘I expect it’ll be all right.’

‘I hope so,’ said Rosemary anxiously. ‘Don’t forget, eleven thirty sharp in my bedroom.’

Rosemary decided to undress as usual that evening. When Mrs Brown came to say good night, she would notice if her daughter’s clothes were not folded at the foot of the bed.

‘Mother, I do like Mr Featherstone, don’t you?’ asked Rosemary, as her mother tucked her in. ‘It was nice this afternoon when we all had tea together.’

Mrs Brown smoothed the bedspread with unusual care. She laughed, but she did not answer.

‘Go to sleep now, poppet,’ was all she said as she bent to kiss her daughter good night.

Rosemary was determined to do nothing of the sort. Both she and John had decided that, rather than take the risk of oversleeping, it would be wiser to stay awake. But one minute she was going over the rhyme that she had made up for the flying spell, and the next, John was shaking her by the shoulder.

‘Wake up, you owl! It’s twenty to twelve!’ he whispered.

Rosemary shot up from the bedclothes.‘Why ever didn’t you wake me sooner?’

‘I couldn’t,’ said John. ‘Your mother was pottering about in the sitting room for ages, so I couldn’t get through. And then I had to wait till I was pretty certain she was asleep. You haven’t time to dress. Come on, you’ll just have to put on your dressing gown.’

Rosemary tied the cord of her old red dressing gown around her waist and pushed her toes into her shoes. Then she picked up the newly embroidered antimacassar.

‘Let’s go!’ she whispered.

The house was full of small night noises as they crept out. Boards creaked and the curtains stirred in a little breeze. Once John fell over a stool, but Mrs Brown did not seem to wake. They tiptoed down the stairs and out into the moonlit garden.

It was strangely transformed by the pale light, with a magic that had nothing to do with Mrs Cantrip and her kind. The familiar back of the house had become a mysterious palace, with gleaming, moon-touched windows. The blues and purples of the garden had disappeared. Only the pale flowers gleamed silver in the strange light. The tobacco plants raised their white trumpets to the sky and, together with the clumps of white stock, filled the air with a heavy perfume. Jasmine starred the shadowy porch, and the Mermaid rose dropped slow, pale petals on the weedy path. A moth fluttered by, sighing something that Rosemary could not quite hear.

‘John!’ she said. ‘Anything could happen on a night like this!’

‘Well, I’ll tell you whatwill happen if we don’t hurry up,’ said John. ‘We won’t get to that rooftop place until the meeting is over. We should look pretty silly turning up there when they’ve all gone home again.’

He seized Rosemary’s hand, and together they ran down the path, in and out of light and shadow.

‘It’s us, chair! John and me!’ called Rosemary softly when they reached the Green Cave.

They dived into the moon-chequered darkness under the currant bushes.

‘I’ve brought it. I promised I would! The antimacassar, I mean,’ said Rosemary. ‘I embroidered your initials on it specially,’ she said proudly, as she tied it on to the back of the chair with two hair ribbons. The chair seemed to give a pleased little jump as Rosemary fluffed out the bows.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ said John impatiently. ‘I bet that rocking chair is a female the way it carries on about its appearance,’ he growled. ‘No male chair would be so soppy!’

‘Hush,’ said Rosemary quickly. The chair had stopped rocking abruptly. ‘I hope you haven’t hurt its feelings.’

John was not listening.

‘You sit on the seat,’ he said, as they carried it from the shelter of the bushes and stood it on the garden path. ‘I’ll stand on the rockers behind and hold on to the back.’

Rosemary opened her mouth to say something, but John said,‘Do hurry! There’s no time to argue.’

She sat cautiously in the chair and held firmly on to the arms. It was lucky she did. Neither of them knew quite how it happened, but no sooner had John balanced on the rockers behind her than the chair gave a lurch and overbalanced. Rosemary had not far to fall, but John picked himself up ruefully with a grazed knee.

‘I thought you’d offended it!’ said Rosemary. ‘Do say you’re sorry and then we can get on. It must be growing awfully late.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ growled John. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings!’

The chair bridled slightly. John dabbed at his knee with a handkerchief, which even in the moonlight looked grubby. Then, very gingerly, he squashed into the seat beside Rosemary. They could just manage it.

‘Now then, we must rock with our feet and hope for the best!’ said Rosemary. ‘Together! One! Two!’ The chair rocked, reluctantly at first, then, as Rosemary repeated the rhyme she had prepared, settled into a steady, swinging motion.

‘In Broomhurst Town we want to find

The tallest roof, if you don’t mind.

We’ll sit as quiet as anything,

And ever more your praises sing.’

Higher and higher swung the chair, and as Rosemary repeated the rhyme for the third time, it rose smoothly from the ground, up into the moon-washed air. It spiralled high above Cranshaw Road, then turned sharply in the direction of Broomhurst.

‘Yoicks! Tally ho!’ shouted John, bouncing up and down on the seat. ‘This is simply wonderful!’

Rosemary’s plaits streamed behind with their speed. Below them lay the sleeping town, a huddle of silver roofs. Or were they roofs? The sharp angles of gables and chimneys seemed softened in the moonlight.

‘If I didn’t know they were roofs I should think they were hills and valleys,’ shouted John above the wind.

‘So would I!’ agreed Rosemary. ‘Those moving dots must be cats!’

They were flying high now, following the string of pale green street lights that lit the main road to Broomhurst like a string of precious stones. As if uncertain of its way the chair swooped down, casting uncomfortably this way and that at the edge of the town.

‘That’s the way!’ said John pointing to the left. ‘I can see the lane leading to Figg’s Bottom, and there are the newly built houses! That’s the one I hid in! Good heavens, they’ve built a lot since yesterday! Good old rocking chair!’

The chair had risen sharply again after turning obediently in the direction of John’s pointing finger.

‘What if we can’t find which is the tallest building?’ called John. ‘We can’t measure them!’

Far away, a clock chimed midnight.

‘Oh, do hurry,dear chair!’ said Rosemary, and the chair redoubled its speed.

Fortunately there was no mistaking the tallest building. Until recently, Broomhurst had been a sleepy, old-fashioned little town like Fallowhithe. The coming of new industries had brought new life and new ways. So far, only a small section near the railway station had been modernized. There was a department store and a hospital, as well as flats and office buildings. The old-fashioned roof tops which looked like foothills huddled around the base of the mountainous new buildings, the tallest of which was undoubtedly a block of offices. A breeze had sprung up, and little clouds were scudding across the face of the moon.

‘Bother!’ said Rosemary. ‘Now we can’t see properly!’

‘It’s not a bad thing really,’ said John. ‘It may give us more chance of landing without being spotted. The old chair ought to –’

Rosemary nudged him sharply.

He added hastily,‘I mean if thedear rocking chair wouldkindly circle around so we can spot a good landing place, when the moon is covered, we could land without being seen. It’s after twelve, so Mrs Cantrip will have arrived. Even if they have posted cats as sentries, they will be off their guard because they won’t expect anyone else.’

Already the chair was circling the building.

‘That looks like a good place!’ said John. ‘Behind that ventilator shaft. The moon is just going behind a cloud. Now!’

The chair rose sharply, then with a sickening swoop dropped toward the ventilator shaft, which seemed to spin up toward them as they swung down.

‘We will make such a clatter when we land that everyone will hear for miles!’ thought Rosemary desperately, and she closed her eyes, waiting for the shock.

The chair landed fair and square on its rockers, with a jolt that shook the teeth in their heads. Oddly enough, it was a silent landing. The two children climbed out rather shakily. The rocking chair still swayed slightly, as if it were out of breath. The moonlight flooded the sky once more and illuminated the roof top.

‘But these aren’t slates and chimneys!’ said John looking at the soft grass at his feet. ‘I thought this was a ventilator shaft, but it’s nothing of the sort. It’s a tree!’

‘Cat Country!’ said Rosemary softly. ‘That’s what Carbonel called it. Hush! I can hear someone talking!’

12

Conspiracy

John put a restraining hand on Rosemary’s arm.

‘It may be Cat Country, but they are enemy cats. We can’t rush in without spying out the land first!’

Rosemary nodded. Then she turned to the rocking chair.

‘Chair, dear! Thank you for bringing us so splendidly!’ she whispered.

‘Yes, rather!’ said John. ‘Almost as good as a jet.’

‘And much, much more quietly!’ added Rosemary quickly. ‘Wait for us, chair. I don’t think anyone will see you tucked away here. We won’t be long, at least I hope not.’

‘Come on!’ said John. ‘Bother, it’s gone dark again.’

They waited till the trailing wisp of cloud had drifted across the face of the moon and the silver light flooded out. The tree they had thought was a ventilator shaft seemed to have redoubled its size. The trunk was wide and strong and scored with the claw sharpenings of innumerable cats. Crouching on the little bank where the tree grew, they peered through tall grass and catnip which grew thickly along the top. On the other side, the bank sloped steeply down to a little hollow from which a stream bubbled. It chuckled along, winding and weed-fringed, toward a thicket of slender trees, where it disappeared underground, still talking to itself.

‘It doesn’t look like water. It’s white,’ said Rosemary.

But John was not listening.‘If this is Cat Country, it’s funny there isn’t a cat to be seen!’ he said.

‘There are the voices again!’ whispered Rosemary.

‘Cross voices they sound, too!’ said John. ‘That’s where they come from, that little clump of trees. Come on. We’d better not take any risks, even if we can’t see any cats. Keep your head down and follow me!’

The ground was broken by low patches of undergrowth. Crouching low, they crept down the bank and made their way in a series of little runs from bush to bush. When they reached the last one large enough to hide behind, they were within easy reach of the trees. Rosemary was just going to stretch her cramped back when John pulled her down again.

‘Look at that rock a few feet away!’ he breathed. Rosemary looked. On the top, sitting so still that he might have been part of it, was a cat. His eyes were the merest slits of emerald green. As they looked, the slits disappeared altogether. His eyes were closed. At the same time, a second cat leaped up on to the rock beside him. Instantly the green eyes opened wide.

‘It’s all right, Noggin!’ said the first cat hurriedly. ‘I was only having a little think, and I can always do it better with my eyes closed.’

‘No good sentrythinks,’ growled Noggin. ‘I suppose, like all the others I’ve just inspected, you were thinking there’s no need to keep your eyes open because the Flying Women are here. Well, you’re wrong! There may be two more about, enemy ones, a Flying Boy and a Flying Girl.’ John nudged Rosemary. ‘Her Royal Greyness has just sent word.’

‘I don’t hold with humans in Cat Country,’ said Swabber sulkily. ‘It’s never been done before, and I don’t like it.’

‘No more than I do,’ said Noggin. ‘But orders is orders. And if the next sentry is “thinking”, I’ll just pull his whiskers for him!’

Still grumbling, Noggin slipped silently off the rock and loped away across the moonlit grass.

Swabber waited until he was out of sight, and muttering something about‘a lot of fuss’, curled up and promptly went to sleep.

‘Now!’ whispered John with his mouth so close to Rosemary’s ear that it tickled.

They crept from the shadow of the bush, thankful for the covering noise of the little stream, and once around the rock they ran to the shelter of the thicket. Just as they reached it, Rosemary stumbled.

‘Ow!’ she exclaimed.

‘Shut up!’ hissed John.

‘It’s all very well!’ whispered Rosemary indignantly, hopping up and down and holding her shin. ‘I stepped on something crackly, and it bit me!’

They looked down. There on the grass was a broom. It was made from a bundle of twigs bound on to a handle, the sort that is used by gardeners– and witches. It was tethered to one of the little trees.

‘It must be the new broom Miss Dibdin made, and they must have both ridden on it after all!’ said Rosemary.

The voices sounded very close now. John and Rosemary crept from tree to tree, hardly daring to breathe, until John put out a warning hand. Looking over his shoulder, Rosemary saw a small open space in the middle of the thicket. In the centre was a tree stump, and on it sat what was clearly Her Royal Greyness. She was a beautiful, grey Persian cat with brilliant green eyes. There were several other animals grouped around her, sitting among the plants which grew thickly in the little clearing. The green eyes turned restlessly from one to the other of the two women seated on a low rock in front of her.

Mrs Cantrip and Miss Dibdin, quite undisturbed by their royal company, were arguing hotly. Mrs Cantrip had lost a shoe again, and her lank hair had escaped from the very large pins which usually kept it fairly tidy, but she seemed quite unruffled. Miss Dibdin, on the other hand, was clearly in a bad temper. Her hat was crooked and her trim suit was rumpled and untidy. While the children watched, she took off her hat and tried to readjust her bun.

‘If you didn’t enjoy it, it’s your own fault,’ Mrs Cantrip was saying. ‘You would come, though I warned you, and you made the broom yourself, so I don’t see you’ve anything to grumble about. As I told you, it takes years to train a broomstick to fly smooth and obedient with only one person up, let alone two!’

Miss Dibdin muttered something indistinctly because her mouth was full of hairpins.

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‘Ah, I’ve known some broomsticks in my time,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘I had one once – McShuttle it was called – made of the best Scottish heather. A beautiful, smooth movement it had.’ Her eyes had a faraway look in them, and she went on in a singsong voice, ‘From Pole to Pole we went once, in a single night, without so much as a jolt or jar, and obedient –’

‘Oh, I know!’ interrupted Miss Dibdin crossly. ‘It singed its tail in the Northern Lights, and you never knew till you got home again. You’ve told me dozens of times. I’m sure I said all the things over my broom you told me to, when I bound the twigs on, and I used all the Flying Philtre there was. There’s not a drop left. Now if only the rocking chair –’

‘The rocking chair!’ said Mrs Cantrip with withering scorn. ‘Armchair flying! Soft, all you young witches nowadays! Do you think I’d be seen dead in it if I had not gone out of business? Not I! Now, when I was young –!’

‘Ladies, ladies!’ broke in the voice of Queen Grisana. It was a soft languid voice. ‘Let us have no unpleasantness! There is nothing I dislike so much. Now let us have a cosy little chat together and I will tell you why I have summoned you.’

The voice seemed always to have a slight purr behind it, but the green eyes flashed hard and brilliant from one to the other.

‘It seemed to me that we might strike a bargain. I can be frank, because there is no danger of our being overheard. I have forbidden my people to use this high place tonight. It can be reached only by two paths which are closely guarded. My sentries will give instant warning if they see anything unusual. These children you mentioned, have you any reason to suspect that they know anything of our meeting?’

‘The meddlesome brats are the only ones who could get here. They’ve stolen my Flying Chair. I’m uneasy in my bones. Reliable my bones is, as a rule,’ said Mrs Cantrip.

‘Then let us be quick in what we have to say,’ purred the grey cat. She lowered her voice, so that the children had to lean forward to hear her. ‘And what we say must never go further than this clump of trees. Now listen carefully!’

Mrs Cantrip and Miss Dibdin, their argument forgotten, craned forward. Grisana continued,‘My dear husband is getting old. A better king and husband you could never find, but he has no ambition. Ambition!’ she repeated, lingering lovingly on the word. ‘My son, my handsome Gracilis for whom this scheme is planned, is in many ways like his dear father – he must hear no whisper of this – but I, I have enough ambition for the three of us.’

There was no purr behind her words now. Rosemary blinked. It was hard to believe that the steely voice they heard belonged to the same animal.

‘Fallowhithe and Broomhurst in a few days will be as one town,’ she rapped out. ‘One town, one King! And that shall not be Carbonel but Castrum, and I shall be Queen!’

She threw back her head, and a strangely triumphant, wailing cry rose on the night air, and sank again to a throaty murmur.

‘For your dear son’s sake, of course!’ said Mrs Cantrip dryly.

‘For my dear son’s sake!’ repeated Grisana, and once more her voice was soft and purring.

‘Well, I’m with you on anything that means trouble for Carbonel. We’re old enemies!’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘I hate him!’

‘I rather thought you did!’ said the grey cat sweetly.

The old woman rubbed the side of her nose with a bony finger.

‘What do you want us to do?’

‘Just this,’ went on Grisana. ‘If, on the day that the last wall of the last house goes up between the two towns, you could see to it that Queen Blandamour – disappears – no violence of course – there will be such confusion in Fallowhithe that, when my armies pour into the town, they will meet with little or no resistance. No bloodshed, and a minimum of unpleasantness. I do so dislike unpleasantness.’

‘It’s lucky for you that the Kings are out of the way answering the Summons. If you succeed, what will your husband do when he returns?’

‘What I tell him!’ purred Grisana very sweetly. ‘I told you he was growing old!’

‘And Carbonel’s kittens? I hear there are two of ’em,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘They might prove a rallying point for the Fallowhithe cats even without Blandamour.’

‘True,’ said Grisana. ‘Perhaps they too had better… disappear! The sooner the better. That will spread a little alarm in advance. Most useful. The dear little things!’

John could hear Rosemary breathing hard with indignation, and he put out a restraining hand.

Mrs Cantrip chuckled. It was not a nice noise. She clapped her hands on her bony knees.‘It’s as nice a bit of mischief as I’ve come across in a week of wet Wednesdays. In plain English, you want the three of them kidnapped? All right. We’ll do it!’ said Mrs Cantrip.

‘That’s all very well, but what do I get out of it?’ said Miss Dibdin huffily. ‘I haven’t been consulted!’

‘Ah, but just think, dear!’ the old woman wheedled. ‘You’ll maybe put all you’ve learned into practice! What a chance! Poor old Mother Cantrip can do no more magic now!’

‘And you shall have your pick of all the kittens in the two towns to bring up as your cat!’ said Queen Grisana.

‘That’s generous, dear! Don’t turn it down. I always say a good cat can make or mar a young witch’s magic.’

‘Very well,’ said Miss Dibdin grudgingly. ‘I’ll help. But I think you might have consulted me a little sooner.’

‘Then that’s settled,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘Well, we’d better be off.’

‘I do hope the broom will behave better on the return journey,’ said Miss Dibdin, licking her lips nervously.

‘Better launch from the edge of the roof. It’ll be easier,’ said the old woman.

‘I must go, too,’ said Grisana. ‘My son will be curious if I stay longer, and that would never do. What we parents must put up with for the sake of our children!’ she purred affectedly.

John and Rosemary crouched among the valerian. The crushed leaves smelt evilly, but they dared not lift their heads to watch, so what happened next they could only hear. There was a pause during which they imagined that Her Royal Greyness and her attendants must have gone their silent way.

Then they heard Mrs Cantrip say,‘She’s gone. As wicked a piece of cat flesh as I’ve had the pleasure of meeting. Very satisfactory. “All for my dear son’s sake!”’ she mimicked. Then, in reply to a remark from Miss Dibdin which they did not hear, she added, ‘Not likely! It’s your broom, you can lead it!’

They heard the receding sound of a stick swishing through the grass. Cautiously they looked up. Miss Dibdin was leading the broom which alternately whipped around and lagged behind, like an unwilling dog on a lead.

‘Better duck,’ whispered John, ‘in case the broom should circle above us when it’s launched.’

They crouched in the grass once more.

There was a distant exclamation and a low laugh from Mrs Cantrip, and after a few moments’ pause there was a whirr above them.

‘They’re off!’ said John. ‘That’s funny, I thought I heard two things whizzing by!’

‘So did I!’ said Rosemary.

Both children sat up and gazed into the sky. Lurching down the wind was Miss Dibdin, clinging to the bucking broom for dear life. But beside her, travelling smoothly and easily, flew something else.

‘The rocking chair! Quick!’ said John. Together they dashed up the grassy slope over which they had crept with such caution. They scrambled up the little tree-crowned hill and peered anxiously over the other side.

‘It’s gone!’ said John. ‘They’ve taken the rocking chair!’

There was a dreadful pause. Then Rosemary said in a very small voice,‘How are we going to get home?’

13

Stranded

‘How are we going to get home? My good girl, I don’t know any more than you do!’ said John, and because he was a little scared, he sounded cross. Then he was sorry. He thumped Rosemary on the back. ‘Here, borrow my hankie,’ he said, and untied it from his grazed knee.

Rosemary sniffed hard, looked at the handkerchief, shook her head and wiped her cheeks on the back of her hand.

‘I’m all right now,’ she said jerkily. ‘We’d better explore. Perhaps we shall find a way down.’

‘What about the two paths Grisana talked about?’ said John. ‘She said they were the only ways up here. Why don’t you go round that side, and I’ll go round the other.’

‘No fear!’ said Rosemary, ‘I’m coming with you!’

The moon, round and full, sailed across a cloudless sky. It shone on the grassy plateau of the high place, touching each leafy branch and every blade of grass with silver. Though it was almost as light as day, the shadows were very dark. Presently Rosemary said,‘I almost wish we could find Noggin or Swabber.’ But there was no sign of life anywhere.

They walked around the edge of the high place together. Beyond was a sheer drop.‘What’s that?’ said John. ‘Down there! Don’t go too near the edge. Lie down and look over.’

They lay on their stomachs and peered over the edge. Six feet down there was a narrow ledge which might be a path. They could see it winding its way down.

‘Well, a cat could jump on to it with safety, but not a human,’ said John, ‘so that’s no good. Let’s find the other one.’

The second mountain path was no better. It wound away down what looked like a sheer wall of chalk. Rosemary turned away from the dizzying view. She could see what looked like cats moving busily about their affairs on the hills clustered below them.

‘I don’t think there is anything we can do except wait until daylight,’ she said.

They wandered back toward the tree-crowned hill where they had first landed. As they came to the little stream, Rosemary said,‘It doesn’t look like water. It’s white! Do you think it could possibly be milk? I’m awfully thirsty!’

She knelt down, drank a little from her cupped hands, but I’m sorry to say she spat it out again.

‘What’s it like?’ asked John.

‘It’s milk all right, but it tastes like milk that’s had haddock boiled in it! Let’s sit down.’

She suddenly felt very, very tired, and they sat down with their backs against a tree trunk.

‘Mrs Cantrip said she would have to find out where the kittens are,’ she said sleepily. ‘I expect it will take her some time, but we ought to make some sort of plan.’

‘All right,’ said John, and he yawned. ‘Let’s think.’ But like Swabber, they both ‘thought’ with their eyes closed and in five minutes they were fast asleep.

It was John who woke first.

‘Rosie! Wake up! It’s morning!’ he said.

Rosemary sat up, rubbed the sleep from her eyes and looked around. No longer were they sitting on a grassy bank, but on a hard, zinc-covered roof, their backs against a ventilator shaft. It was a grey morning with a chill little breeze that found its way through Rosemary’s dressing gown. She shivered. John turned up the collar of his jacket. They looked about them, at the grey expanse of roof. Where the stream had chuckled along its weed-fringed way was a gutter; where the thicket of trees had stood was a group of television aerials.

‘Let’s have a look at the mountain paths!’ said John. ‘Perhaps they’ve turned into something useful.’

They ran to the edge of the roof. The‘mountain paths’ had certainly turned into something useful for the occupiers of all the ten floors of offices below, but not to anyone unlucky enough to be stranded on the roof. The two fire escapes they had become stopped short at the top floor. Neither of the escapes went up as high as the roof itself.

‘If only we had a rope! We could let ourselves down,’ said John. ‘We might try tearing your nightdress into strips.’

‘We certainly might not!’ said Rosemary. ‘If you think I’m going home in nothing but a dressing gown –’ She stopped as a distant clock struck, and caught John’s arm. ‘Wemust get home somehow, it’s seven o’clock! Mother will be worried stiff if she finds we aren’t there, and wepromised not to be inconsiderate. What shall we do?’

‘There simply must be some way up on to the roof,’ said John desperately. ‘What’s that triangular thing sticking up over there?’

They ran to look. In the side of a triangular erection, facing away from where they had been standing, was a door. They rattled the handle, but it was locked. They did not stop to argue. They hammered on it with their fists and shouted for all they were worth, and after what seemed an age, it opened outwards suddenly. They were nearly knocked off their feet. Just inside, at the top of a flight of stairs, stood a very fat woman in a sacking apron, holding a broom with both hands above her head, as if ready to defend herself against all comers. When she saw John and Rosemary, she lowered the broom.

‘Well, I don’t know! A couple of children! Are there any more of you?’ she asked suspiciously, peering around the door.

‘Only us two, John and Rosemary.’

‘You were making enough noise for twenty,’ said the old woman. ‘I’d just started scrubbing them top stairs when I heard a shouting and banging like the Day of Judgement. “Burglars!” I said to myself. “I’m off.” And then I said, “Sounds like kids’ voices. It’s them boys again, I’ll be bound. I’ll get even with ’em!” So up I comes. But whatever next! What are you doing up here?’

‘Oh, please!’ said Rosemary. ‘Please let us out. We must get home! Mummy will be so worried. They left us and we couldn’t get down!’

‘Locked you up there? You poor little things. You ought to be ashamed of getting your little sister into trouble like this!’ the old woman said to John.

John opened his mouth to protest, but thought better of it, and she went on,‘Well, you’d better come down, the pair of you.’

She took Rosemary by the hand, not unkindly.‘Why, you’re starved, love! I’ve got a kettle on downstairs for a cup of cocoa. You’d better have a drop to warm you up. You’ll have to walk down – the lift don’t work till nine.’

She shut the door and shot the bolts home. Thankfully, the children followed her. There were ten floors to pass. She went down in front of them, telling them over her shoulder that she was getting her work done early because her son had been‘took bad’, and she wanted to get home to him, and about the battle she waged against dirty footmarks on the stairs, and boys in general, and that she could not understand how in the world they could have got up to the roof. John made a halfhearted attempt to defend ‘them boys’. After all,they were not to blame this time, but the old woman swept his explanation on one side with an indignant ‘Don’t you tell me!’

At last she led them down to a little room in the basement. Here they found a sink, a metal cupboard, a chair and a table. On the table stood an electric kettle which was already blowing steam through its spout like an angry dragon. She got a mug and two cups from the cupboard, a tin of cocoa and another of condensed milk, and in each mug she made a rich, dark brew. It was not cocoa as they knew it, but it was sweet and comforting, and put new courage into them. They drank while sitting on two upturned buckets.

‘Lucky for you I was early,’ the old woman said, between gulps of scalding cocoa. ‘Now then, suppose you tell me all about it!’ Her eyes were shrewd over the rim of the mug.

‘Well,’ said John slowly. ‘We can’t tell youall about it, because of the others. But we got on to the roof when they were there, and then… well, they left us up there, on purpose I think, and we couldn’t get down.’

‘Well, I must say, I like a lad who won’t tell on his pals, but you can tell them from me that next time I catch hair or hide of ’em lurking on my roof, there’ll be real trouble. You’re a nicely spoken pair of little things, I’ll say that, but let this be a lesson to you. Steer clear ofthem boys! And if ever I find you up there again –’ She blew noisily on the hot cocoa and left them to imagine the awfulness of the punishment that would be in store.

‘Then you won’t say anything to anyone this time?’ said Rosemary. ‘You are a darling! We’ll never do it again, and we shall never forget how kind you’ve been!’

The old woman’s eyes twinkled. ‘Well, I like a bit of fun myself. Always did! And believe it or not, I was young once myself. Where do you live?’

‘Fallowhithe,’ said Rosemary.

‘Fallow…?’

The old woman put down her mug with such a bump that the cocoa slopped over. She stared at Rosemary.

‘’Ere, don’t tell me you’re in your night things?’

Rosemary nodded.

‘You been up there all night?’

Rosemary nodded again.

‘Your poor ma will be frantic! Have you got your bus fares home? You haven’t? Well, I don’t know! ‘Ere you are.’ She took a worn black purse from her pocket and pushed a shilling into John’s hand. When they tried to thank her she seemed embarrassed.

‘All right, all right, you can send it back, dear. Flackett’s the name, Number 1 Adelaide Row. Now hop it, or I shan’t get my work done early after all.’

John and Rosemary did not have to be told twice. But before finally going out into the street, Rosemary tied up her nightdress with her dressing gown cord.

‘It’s a good thing your dressing gown has got too small,’ said John. ‘It looks like a coat.’

‘I hope everyone else will think so,’ said Rosemary doubtfully.

But people who travel on buses between seven and eight in the morning do not bother very much about what their fellow travellers are wearing. Apart from a wink and a‘What’s this, the babes in the wood?’ from the driver, for there were no other children, they reached the end of Cranshaw Road without any more adventures.

As they turned into number 101, John said,‘We never made any plans last night after all about keeping the kittens safe. Let’s look in before we go up to breakfast and tell Woppit to be specially careful.’

Rosemary nodded.

‘And we must get those screws for the lock straight away,’ she said as they ran across the lawn. They could see the greenhouse from the bottom of the path.

‘Oh!’ she said. ‘The door’s open! Come on!’

Together they raced down the path and looked inside. The flower pots they had stacked in one corner so neatly were upset and were scattered over the floor. The basket, in which the kittens slept, was on its side. The blanket was not there.

‘Calidor! Pergamond!’ called Rosemary sharply.

There was no reply. Only a plaintive squeak from the swinging door broke the silence. Frantically, they searched in every corner, they parted the strands of the creeper that grew up the sides of the greenhouse, they turned the watering can upside down, they even peered through the grating in the floor and as they searched they called. But there was no sign of the kittens.

‘It’s no use,’ said Rosemary. ‘They’ve gone!’

[????????: _12.jpg]

14

Gone!

John and Rosemary stood and looked at each other in horrified silence. And then the silence was broken.

‘What’s that?’ said Rosemary sharply. ‘Listen!’ It was a strangled ‘mew!’ which seemed to come from somewhere outside the greenhouse. The two children ran through the open door and looked around anxiously. Propped against the wall was a large, cracked, earthenware pot, the kind that gardeners sometimes use for forcing rhubarb. The hole at the top was covered with a brick, but it was from underneath that the sounds came.

‘Quick!’ said John. The mews were growing stronger.

They lifted the pot, but it was not the kittens they could hear. It was Woppit. The old cat was trying to free herself from the folds of the kittens’ blanket in which she had been rolled.

‘Woppit, dear!’ said Rosemary, as she unwound the struggling animal. ‘The kittens have gone! What has happened?’ But Woppit was too ruffled and woebegone to explain.

‘My little, kingly kittens!’ she wailed. ‘My furry darlings! They’ve gone! They’ve taken them away, and old Woppit still alive to tell! The shame of it!’

She rocked herself, moaning, from side to side. Rosemary lifted the rumpled animal on to her lap, but Woppit refused to be comforted.

‘I’m quite sure you did everything you could!’ said Rosemary. ‘But tell us what happened!’

‘They were sleeping in their bed,’ said Woppit, ‘so sweet and snug as two little sardines in a tin, and the moon was shining down on them so round and white as a bowl of milk, and there was me standing guard, and humming a little song and never dreaming –’ She broke off, lifted her untidywhiskers to the sky and wailed again.

‘Oh, do go on, Woppit!’ said John. ‘If only you’d tell us what happened, perhaps we coulddo something!’

‘Peaceful as a kitchen hearthrug it was,’ she continued. ‘And then suddenly the door opened, and there was them humans!’

‘What were they like?’ asked Rosemary.

‘There was a tall thin one with Persian fur that needed a deal of licking, and a short sleek one.’

‘Persian fur?’ repeated John.

‘I guessed as much,’ said Rosemary. ‘It must have been Mrs Cantrip. Her hair sticks out around her face when it’s untidy, rather like a Persian cat, and “sleek” is a very good description of Miss Dibdin. But how did they find out the kittens were here?’

‘Search me!’ said John shortly.

‘Go on. Woppit. What did they do?’

‘Do?’ went on Woppit, rocking herself from side to side in her distress. ‘They stood over the basket, and Persian stirs my precious pets with her great bony finger and says, “We’re in luck, my dear! It’s them sure enough. It’s Carbonel’s kittens!”

‘And Sleek says, “How do you know, dear?”

‘“By the three white hairs at the tips of their little tails. The sign of all royal cats and kittens. Didn’t they teach you anything at Oxford?”

‘And Sleek claps her hands and says, “What a stroke of luck!” and she laughs, as pleased as if she’d found a couple of kipper heads in a bowl of cream. “Let’s take ’em and go!” she says, and she bends down to scoop up my little furry loves.

‘“Not without reckoning with me!” I says, and I ups and claws her hand good and proper. Well, she lets out a screech so loud as if she’d got her tail caught in the door. But Persian tumbles my darlings on to the floor, whips the blanket out of the basket and drops it on top of me. Mind you,I got in a left and right that’ll leave a mark for a bit, but it weren’t no good. She rolls me up and puts me in that dark place, and then she cackles through the hole at the top, “You can tell them children they may be clever, but Katie Cantrip has still got a trick up her sleeve! I might have known they’d get themselves mixed up in this!” And then she claps something on top of the pot so that I can’t even hear what happens to my little purring, furry sweetings!’

The old cat lifted her muzzle and wailed again.

‘Look, Woppit, dear. You don’t have to tell us how frightful it is. We know. But we must go back to the flat now. We’ll come back as soon as we can after breakfast.’

‘We’ve simply got to keep our heads,’ said John.

‘The best thing you can do is to wait here until Blandamour comes, and tell her what’s happened,’ Rosemary added.

‘We’ve had some excitement, too, I can tell you!’ said John.

The two children ran toward the house. When they reached the path from which they had set out the night before, Rosemary stopped.

‘Look at that, John!’

‘What, those two great skid marks on the gravel?’

‘Yes, don’t you see what it means?’

‘Well, I suppose it means that we’ve got to get the garden roller and roll it flat again,’ said John crossly. ‘It must have been the weight of the two of us in the chair last night. Oh, come on, Rosie. I could eat a huge breakfast. Hope it’s fried eggs.’

‘But it wasn’t us!’ persisted Rosemary. ‘Those are the marks of the rocking chair coming back with Mrs Cantrip! I think it did the same to her as it did to me. Of course it’s a dear, but I don’t think it’s very bright. When you tell it to go home, it simply goes back to wherever it started from. It doesn’t stop to think which house belongs to which person.’

John whistled, fried eggs forgotten for the moment.

‘So when Mrs Cantrip told it to take her home, it brought her to your house by mistake, and I expect the broom with Miss Dibdin followed.’

Rosemary nodded.

‘And I suppose the two of them thought they’d look around while they were here, so that’s how they found the kittens. Almost by mistake! What rotten luck!’

‘We’ve got to think of some way out of this as we’ve never thought before,’ said Rosemary.

‘Well, it’s no use trying to think on empty stomachs. Do come on!’

Rosemary hurried, and together they burst into the flat. The adventures of the night before had paled before this new anxiety. They rushed into the kitchen where Mrs Brown was frying eggs and bacon.

‘Mother! The kittens have gone!’ said Rosemary. ‘They aren’t anywhere to be found. Whatever shall we do?’

Her mother lifted a fried egg and slid it carefully on to a piece of fried bread. Then she looked up, and said with maddening grownup detachment,‘Do, darling? Well, first of all you had better get dressed and then both of you must have a thorough wash! Where have you been? I don’t mind you getting up early, Rosie, but I think you’re a bit big to go wandering about the garden in your night things.’

‘Yes, Mummy, but the kittens –!’

Her mother smiled.‘I expect they’re somewhere in the garden, darling. Don’t worry. Run off and dress now.’

Rosemary ran.

As soon as they were able after breakfast, which, for John at least, was a thorough-going affair of cereal, bacon and egg, toast and marmalade, the children escaped to the garden. As they went into the greenhouse, Blandamour ran to meet them. Merbeck sat in respectful attendance in the background, and Woppit lay on the floor with her front paws over her nose moaning quietly to herself.

‘Has she told you what’s happened?’ asked Rosemary.

‘She has told me, poor, faithful creature,’ said Blandamour. ‘My unhappy little ones!’

‘It is a bad business, Your Majesty,’ said Merbeck. ‘It could not be much worse!’

‘Oh, couldn’t it?’ said John. ‘You haven’t heard half of it yet. You see, last night –!’

He began the story of their adventure, and then Rosemary broke in and finished the tale. And as they recounted Grisana’s wicked plot, Woppit stopped moaning and sat up to listen, and Blandamour fixed them with unwavering blue eyes, motionless except for the angry twitching of her long white tail.

‘Then Grisana thinks that with me and my kittens out of the way, she and her Broomhurst crowd will be able to walk into my country and take possession, without a claw being raised in its defence! She is so unused to a well-governed kingdom that she mistakes the contentment of Fallowhithe cats forlack of spirit! And I, Blandamour, am to disappear! She talks as if I were a kitten with its eyes closed. I assure you I can defend myself!’

The white cat was pacing up and down now with flattened ears and bristling back.

‘There will be many to defend you, Your Majesty, should it come to that. But the first part of Grisana’s plan has succeeded,’ said Merbeck. ‘The royal kittens have gone.’

‘My poor little children. What will become of them?’

‘Your Majesty!’ said John suddenly.

All through Rosemary’s account of their adventures, he had been busy digging out a loose tile from the floor with the toe of his shoe. His face was very red. ‘Your Majesty, it’s my fault, about the kittens I mean. If I had finished mending the lock, as I meant to last night, it would never have happened.’

‘It’s just as much my fault,’ said Rosemary loyally.

‘Somehow or other, we’ll find the kittens and bring them back safely,’ went on John. ‘Won’t we, Rosie?’

Rosemary nodded.

Blandamour looked searchingly at them both.

‘If anyone can, I think you will. When the Kings return, my dear husband will thank you as you deserve for all you have done for us. When that day comes, all will be well again. Until then, we must keep this grasping Grisana at bay!’

‘Your Majesty,’ said Merbeck, stepping forward. ‘I am old, my claws are blunt and my flanks are lean, but my blood races like a young animal at the tale of such wickedness! If your subjects know of this foul plot too soon, there will be bloodshed. And that we must avoid. Hot-headed young animals would bandy words with Broomhurst cats, and that would lead to blows. There would be border incidents, sallies into enemy country and eventually open war. I have seen it happen before.’

‘Then what shall we do?’ asked Blandamour.

‘For the moment the hardest thing of all. Nothing,’ said Merbeck. ‘Only a few trusted animals must know of this plot until the time is ripe!’

‘But my poor stolen kittens!’

‘They can only be recovered by cunning, not force,’ said Merbeck.

‘But they are going to try to kidnap Queen Blandamour as well!’ said Rosemary.

‘Not until the day of the attack!’ said Merbeck. ‘And that will not be until the night of the day the last house is finished.’

‘You are right, Merbeck,’ said Blandamour. ‘When my dear husband returns he must find every cat in his kingdom unharmed! I shall go about my usual business until the day the last house is built.’

‘But –’

‘Thanks to you, my faithful John and Rosemary, we shall be ready for them. Woppit will stay here and act as your messenger. I shall keep in close touch with you, and if my spies hear any news of my precious kittens –’ her voice broke but she pulled herself bravely together – ‘you shall hear at once!’

‘Come on, Rosie,’ said John. ‘We must find Mrs Cantrip, and see if we can get her to let anything out!’

‘I suppose we must,’ said Rosemary reluctantly.

15

Miss Dibdin’s Magic

When John knocked at Mrs Cantrip’s door, there was no answer. But knowing that this did not necessarily mean she was not at home, he went on knocking, quite politely but firmly. Presently they heard footsteps on the other side of the door, not Mrs Cantrip’s shuffling tread, but the sharp click of high heels in a hurry. The door opened, and there was Miss Dibdin. She was wearing a large, embroidered apron, and her face was rather red. She held a wooden spoon in one hand.

‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ she said ungraciously. ‘I thought it was the postman, or I should never have come down. What do you want?’

‘We want to speak to Mrs Cantrip, please,’ said John.

‘She’s out, and I can’t stop talking here. I’ve got a most important piece of magic on the simmer. Go away.’

‘Oh, but please –’ began Rosemary.

‘There now, it’s boiling over. I’m sure I can smell it! You’d better come inside.’

A strange, sharp smell reached the children’s noses, and as Miss Dibdin closed the door behind them, it became almost overpowering. She led them at a run, not into the kitchen, but up a flight of dark, steep stairs, into a room they had never seen before.

It was clearly a bed-sitting room. There was a bed in one corner, a wicker chair, a wardrobe and a table. The bed was made of tarnished brass, and two of its knobs were missing. A piece of folded cardboard shored up one of the table legs. There was a very old-fashioned gas fire in which the flames flickered in a blue and rather chilly way among the broken burners. Sprouting from the side of the fireplace was a gas ring. Propped up on the mantelpiece above, was a large, open book.

[????????: _13.jpg]

Miss Dibdin rushed forward and fell on her knees on the shabby rag rug which lay in front of the hearth.

‘It worked!’ she cried excitedly. ‘I’ve done it!’

‘Done what?’ asked John.

‘Look at the saucepan!’ she said dramatically. The children looked where she was pointing.

‘But there isn’t a saucepan!’ said Rosemary.

‘That’s just the point!’ said Miss Dibdin excitedly. ‘I’ve made it invisible!’

The children stared at the fireplace. The gas ring was lit. They could see the blue flames radiating like the petals of some strange blue flower, but they could see no saucepan, only what looked at first like a pale green jelly, apparently suspended just above the ring. But it was not a jelly. It was a liquid, which was steaming and bubbling as merrily as water before an egg is put in to boil.

Miss Dibdin plunged her wooden spoon in the liquid. There was a little hiss, and at once the spoon disappeared, though John and Rosemary could see from the vigorous twisting of her wrist that she was stirring the bubbling mixture. Miss Dibdin cooed with delight.

‘Good heavens!’ said Rosemary.

With little squeals of pleasure, Miss Dibdin began darting round the room carrying the invisible saucepan. The children could see the green liquid suspended in mid-air, about a foot away from the hand which seemed to be grasping the handle. With the invisible spoon, Miss Dibdin dropped a small blob of the mixture on the kitchen scales which stood on the table.

There was a tiny hiss and the scales disappeared. Next she tried a bunch of herbs that lay beside it. That disappeared, too. A brown paper bag, a saucer with something pink and rather horrid looking in it, all the things she had used to make her magic, disappeared one after another as she touched them with the dripping spoon. Her brush and comb on the rickety dressing table, the candlestick by her bed, one of the bedroom slippers by the chair, they all snuffed out as completely as the flame of a candle on a birthday cake.

‘How absolutely smashing!’ said John. ‘You are clever!’

Miss Dibdin flushed with pleasure.‘I really think that even Katie will have to admit that it is quite creditable! She is always so crushing about my little efforts, though I must admit I have never succeeded in getting a spell to work before!’

As she spoke she gave a playful tap to the basket chair, and it was gone!

‘Won’t it be a little awkward living in a room with invisible furniture?’ asked Rosemary, as the brass bedstead disappeared, leaving the bedclothes, which had not been touched, still neatly tucked in and apparently floating on air.

‘Perhaps it will, dear. What a practical little thing you are! Just one more – I can’t resist it!’ And she made a playful dab at the wardrobe. It disappeared, too, suddenly revealing a row of clothes inside hanging on a row of invisible pegs, with a neat line of shoes apparently floating beneath.

‘You must admit, it’s enough to go to anyone’s head a little!’ She laughed. ‘Of course I should really have made the counter-spell first, to make things visible again, but I’ve got the recipe all ready here!’

She tapped with the wooden spoon on the large book which was propped up on the mantelpiece, quite forgetting for the moment its magic properties, and lo and behold! The book disappeared, too. This time she did not laugh. She gave a horrified gasp.

‘Oh, whatever have I done? How can I brew a counter-spell from an invisible book? Oh, silly me!’

‘Well, couldn’t you find another book?’ asked Rosemary.

‘You don’t understand,’ moaned Miss Dibdin. ‘No two spells are ever alike! You can’t brew a spell from one book and a counter-spell from another. It wouldn’t work!’

‘Where did you get your book from?’ asked John curiously.

Miss Dibdin put the saucepan back on the ring, felt for the invisible chair, and sank despondently into it. The result looked very odd indeed.

‘I found it in the library,’ she went on. ‘That was really what started it all. You must have noticed that most reference library users are rather elderly, and find stooping a little difficult? Well, I don’t believe the books on the bottom shelves of the Fallowhithe Library ever get looked at at all, and it was there I found this one, in a dark corner, covered with dust and cobwebs. I thought it would make such an interesting hobby for the summer holidays.’

‘But I thought you couldn’t take reference books home?’ said John.

‘Well, of course you can’t, but the girl in charge that day was one of my old pupils, and I persuaded her to let me, just this once. Oh dear, what have I done?’

The invisible basketwork gave a protesting creak as Miss Dibdin heaved miserably in the chair.‘Think of the fine I shall have to pay the library! And whatever will Katie say to the disappearance of all her furniture?’

She jumped up and felt anxiously along the mantelpiece to reassure herself that the book was still there. But it is difficult to pick up a large invisible book which is propped insecurely on a narrow shelf. There was a slithering sound, as the book was dislodged by her fumbling fingers, and it slipped off the mantelpiece. It hit the saucepan handle with such force that the pan overturned, and the liquid slopped on to the hearth. The rag rug promptly disappeared. What sort of noise the book made when it fell on to the hearth rug nobody noticed, because of Miss Dibdin’s loud cry of distress.

‘It’s all upset. Oh, how clumsy of me! All that lovely vanishing mixture! And after so much trouble!’

‘And what a mess!’ said John. ‘It’s all over me. Lend me a hankie, Rosie!’

Rosemary turned and held out her handkerchief. But John was nowhere to be seen. The handkerchief was taken from her limp fingers by his invisible hand, and she watched fascinated, while it seemed to float unaided in the direction of his voice. When it reached the place where his waist would have been, the handkerchief, too, disappeared.

‘John, don’t! Oh, do come back!’ said Rosemary in distress.

‘Come back? What on earth do you mean?’ said John.

Rosemary swallowed hard.

‘You’ve gone invisible, too!’

16

Invisible

‘Don’t be so silly!’ said John crossly.

‘It’s not silly, you are invisible!’ said Rosemary, and she put out her hand to see if she could feel him. To her relief she could. He felt reassuringly warm and solid.

‘Well, you needn’t put your finger in my eye!’ he said.

‘Oh, my dears, how exciting!’ said Miss Dibdin, her depression forgotten. ‘An invisible boy! Who would have thought I could do it!’

‘Well, I certainly wish you hadn’t!’ said John. ‘What on earth is going to happen to me now?’

‘It’s a pity I can’t make the counter-spell, of course,’ said Miss Dibdin, ‘but I expect you’ll soon get accustomed to it, dear. It may even have its uses, you know!’

‘I don’t want to get accustomed to it,’ said John, sulkily, and then he went on in quite a different voice, ‘But pr’aps you’re right! I may find it quite useful!’ His voice came from somewhere near the hearth rug, as though he was stooping to pick something up.

‘Now then,’ he went on. ‘Suppose you tell us where the royal kittens are hidden!’

This time his voice came, unexpectedly, a few inches from Miss Dibdin’s ear, and she started uncomfortably.

‘They aren’t hidden,’ she said, ‘and although I’m grateful to you for taking such an active part in my little experiment, it’s as much as my life is worth to tell you where the kittens are. Personally I’m thankful to be rid of them.’ She rubbed her scratched hands tenderly as she spoke.

‘Well, if you don’t tell us,’ said John, ‘I might have to make you invisible, too. There is just about enough of the mixture left at the bottom of the saucepan!’

Rosemary turned to where a paper-thin pale-green disc lay on the hearth rug. She supposed this was all that was left at the bottom of the invisible saucepan. Fascinated, she watched it rise from the floor and heard John’s voice keeping pace with it as it advanced toward the retreating figure of Miss Dibdin. The liquid frothed and winked in a hundred bubbles as John twirled the invisible pan. Miss Dibdin had her back against the wall now, and above her head the mixture had taken the shape of something that is just about to be poured.

‘No!’ she said, putting up her hands to ward it off. ‘No! No! I don’t want to be invisible.’

‘I expect you’d get accustomed to it!’ said John. ‘And it may even have its uses! That’s what you said to me, you know. But I won’t do it if you tell me what you’ve done with the kittens!’

‘All right! All right! I’ll tell all I know, if you’ll only put the saucepan down!’

Almost as anxiously as Miss Dibdin, Rosemary watched the green liquid right itself to a disc again and sink slowly on to the table. Miss Dibdin tottered across the room and sat heavily on the bed whose broken, but invisible springs jangled in protest.

‘I’ll tell you all I know, but it’s not very much,’ she said. ‘Katie went off to sell them both this afternoon, somewhere in Broomhurst, because she said no one was likely to look for them there, and she might as well make a bit of money out of them. When I asked her where she was taking them she just laughed and said something about two pins in a packet, and two peas in a peck. That’s all I know about it,’ she ended sulkily.

‘Thank you!’ said John. ‘Come on, Rosie.’

The handle of the door seemed to turn of its own accord, and the door itself swung open. Wide-eyed, Rosemary squeezed through as much as possible to one side. The door closed behind them.

‘You needn’t behave as though I had the plague!’ said John as they went down the uneven stairs. ‘Being invisible may have its uses, but it’s jolly unpleasant.’

‘Oh, John, I’m so sorry!’ Rosemary felt for his hand, and in the dimness of the little downstairs room she threw her arms around him and gave him a hug, a thing that ordinarily she would not have dreamed of doing.

‘All right! All right!’ said John uncomfortably. ‘You needn’t choke me!’ But he said it in a voice that sounded comforted. ‘Come on, you old Rosie!’

They opened the front door and went out into the sunlit street.

‘Let’s get home as quickly as possible,’ said Rosemary to the sound of John’s feet padding beside her. ‘I’m glad you didn’t do it, you know. I mean, I don’t like Miss Dibdin much when you can see her, but invisible –! You don’t think she’ll start brewing any more from that book of hers, do you?’

‘She won’t!’ said John cheerfully.

‘But if she can make it uninvisible again?’

‘It wouldn’t help her much if she could, because she hasn’t got it any longer. I picked it up from the hearth rug where it had fallen. But, of course, you couldn’t either of you see it. And, my good girl, if you used your eyes you’d see that I’ve got the remains of the invisible mixture, too! She’s done quite enough mischief with it already.’

Rosemary backed away nervously as the pale green circle floated toward her.‘Here, you’d better carry the saucepan. This book needs both arms,’ said John. Rosemary felt gingerly for his arm and slid her fingers down on to the handle.

‘But can you read it and find the counter-spell so that you can stop being invisible?’ she persisted.

‘Of course I can! Let’s find somewhere quiet where we can sit down and I can have a look!’

‘I’d much rather go home,’ said Rosemary.

‘I dare say, but you aren’t invisible,’ said John tartly.

A man in a bowler hat, carrying a brief case, bumped heavily into him and looked after them in a puzzled way.

‘Oh, do come on!’ said Rosemary. ‘Poor man, it must be horrible to walk into an invisible boy.’

‘And it’s pretty horrible for an invisible boy to be walked into by a great hulking visible man. He trod on my foot, but I don’t get any sympathy. Oh, no!’

Rosemary began hotly,‘Well anyway –’ and then she stopped. ‘Oh, don’t let’s squabble. If ever there was a time to stick together, it’s now. Come on. Let’s cross the road and go into the public gardens over there. We can sit on the steps of the statue.’

‘If somebody thought they were going to sit on a seat and found themselves sitting on an invisible me, I should think they’d go potty,’ said John gloomily.

Keeping close together they crossed the road. It was a small garden, bright with flower beds. In the centre was the statue of a departed benefactor of Fallowhithe. He stood forever leaning on a marble column. There were several mothers sitting on the wooden seats near by, knitting and gossiping in the sunshine, while their small children slept in prams or played around them.

‘How silly marble trousers look!’ said Rosemary.

‘Never mind the statue!’ said John, and pulled her down beside him on the top step. She put out her hand, and although she could not see it she felt the powdery leather of the book’s ancient binding and the little breeze made by the paper as John hurriedly flicked the pages over.

‘It’s terribly difficult to read,’ he said. ‘The writing is all cramped and spidery. Now then, “Iniquity, invective,”’ he read. ‘Ah, here it is. “Invisibility”.’

‘Go on, read it!’ said Rosemary, and John read out slowly. ‘“First take the pan or pipkin formerly used for the Brew of Invisibility, and scour it thoroughly. Put in it seven eggshells full of water, so clear that it doth appear not to be there, and in the water place some transparent substance that by boiling will consume itself. When the water is at the boil, then by the light of a dwindled candle, seethe it until it shall have disappeared, stirring the meantime widdershins, and intoning this incantation…”

‘Don’t let’s bother about the incantation now,’ went on John. ‘What does “widdershins” mean?’

‘Widdershins means counterclockwise, like this,’ said Rosemary, and she stirred an imaginary saucepan.

‘I don’t think it does,’ said John. ‘It means the other way.’

‘No, this way!’ said Rosemary impatiently.

‘I bet it doesn’t,’ said John. ‘And what does “intoning” mean?’

‘It means singing, like this,’ and she proceeded to show him. ‘More or less li-i-i-ke this, like they do in chur-ur-urch!’

She stood up the better to show what stirring widdershins meant and intoned.‘And anyway, I thi-i-i-ink we’d better go home to di-i-i-inner!’

She broke off as a soothing voice behind her said,‘Yes, dearie, I should. The very best thing you can do!’

She turned around. Looking up at her were three of the mothers.

‘Poor little thing! Talking to herself and waving her arms about,’ said one. ‘I noticed her when she came in, and I thought then she looked a bit queer,’ said another.

‘I don’t look queer!’ said Rosemary indignantly.

‘They ought not to let her out alone!’ said a little old woman with a bulging shopping basket. ‘They do say that talking to yourself is –’

‘But I wasn’t talking to myself,’ Rosemary broke in.

‘Then who were you talking to, dear?’ said the first woman, in a voice that was meant to soothe, but only maddened Rosemary.

‘Why, to John!’ she said unwarily. ‘He’s sitting beside me on the steps here, only you can’t see him, he’s invisible. Oh, don’t pull my skirt!’ she went on, ignoring John’s warning tweak, and pushing away the hand that no one could see.

A short fat woman nodded to her tall friend.‘I thought so, poor kid,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and fetch a taxi, and you and Mrs Podbury see she doesn’t come to any harm while I’m gone. Look after baby, Ida!’ she called over her shoulder, and bustled off.

By this time a crowd of people had collected from nowhere, as crowds do, surrounding the statue and agreeing that it was a shame and that something ought to be done about it.

‘Now you’ve done it!’ said John under cover of the hum of discussion.

‘Whatever shall we do?’ said Rosemary desperately. Her face was red and her voice shook, but nothing would have made her give way to tears in front of so many people all oozing with unwanted sympathy.

‘I don’t know,’ whispered John. ‘But I’ll stand by you!’ and the hand he slipped into hers gave a heartening squeeze.

From their vantage point on the steps they could see over the heads of the crowd. A taxi had stopped just outside the entrance, and the short fat mother was hurrying toward them.

‘Somehow we’ve got to create a diversion!’ said John.

‘Whatever’s that?’ asked Rosemary.

‘You’ll soon see!’ answered John. ‘Here, give me the saucepan!’

‘For goodness’ sake, don’t make somebody else invisible!’ said Rosemary in alarm.

‘Not somebody, something!’ said John from between tight lips. ‘It’s the only way!’

Mrs Podbury was advancing from the crowd.

‘Now just tell me where you live, dear, and we’ll take you home in a nice taxi!’ she said in a cooing voice.

But Rosemary did not have to answer. With a twist of his wrist John tipped the remaining green liquid over the marble statue. There was a little hiss, and suddenly the steps were there, the pedestal was there, but the statue of Sir Bartle Boole, J.P., had vanished into thin air.

There was a moment’s pause and then a gasp rose from the crowd, which wavered and fell back.

‘I think it’s time we went home to dinner!’ said the short fat mother faintly, and seizing her pram in one hand and the protesting Ida in the other, hurried away.

It suddenly seemed that no one in the crowd wanted to meet the eye of anyone else.

‘Quick!’ said John as the crowd began to melt. ‘Now’s our chance! Scram!’

Together they ran for the gate. Rosemary looked back once. The knot of people had disappeared as completely as the statue of Sir Bartle Boole, J.P. They dashed past the taxi, whose driver was looking angrily around for his fare, down the road and around the corner as fast as they could go.

‘Let’s go home!’ panted John, ‘before anything else happens! What a morning!’

17

Adelaide Row

When they reached home, without a word John and Rosemary made for the Green Cave. Rosemary flopped down with a sigh of relief. She could see where John was sitting by the sudden flattening of grass and fallen leaves beside her. A couple of beetles scuttled away from his invisible weight, protesting in shrill, startled voices.

‘I’m sorry we disturbed you!’ said Rosemary.

‘Nice manners! Nice manners!’ chirruped a sparrow as it hopped on to the next bush.

‘Now then,’ said John. ‘I’ve been doing some pretty hard thinking. We’ve got so many problems to solve that we shall just have to take them as they come. The first is, what are we to say to your mother about me? I can’t go in to dinner like this!’

Rosemary frowned.

‘Couldn’t you send a note to say you’ve been called away on urgent business?’ she suggested.

‘Oh, be your age, Rosie!’ said John. ‘You know very well that your mother would want to know what the urgent business was. And if you told her, she wouldn’t believe a word of it. I shouldn’t blame her, either.’

‘Well, supposing… I know! Go to the telephone box at the end of the road, ring up the Williamses in the flat below, and ask if you can speak to Mum. All you need do is remind her that you were going to see your aunt one day, and would it matter if you did not come home for dinner, and then ringoff quickly before she asks awkward questions. I’ve got tuppence.’

John had a penny, and two halfpennies which a kindly passer-by changed for them. Rosemary went with him to the call box. She watched the receiver apparently leap into the air and remain suspended, as John clamped it against his ear. She heard the pennies drop and saw the dial whizzing around of its own accord. After a pause the receiver floated down again and the door suddenly burst open, bumping her painfully on the nose.

‘Sorry,’ said John. ‘I forgot you couldn’t see I was coming out. It’s all right. Your mother didn’t seem to mind a bit. But you’d better hurry up because dinner has been ready for half an hour and it’s spoiling. It’s my favourite, steak and kidney pie and chocolate blancmange. Just my luck.’

‘I’ll bring you some to the greenhouse,’ said Rosemary, ‘as soon as I can. You’d better see if Woppit has had any message from Blandamour.’

It was rather an uncomfortable meal, spent in heading her mother off the subject of John’s sudden passionate desire to see an aunt of whom he was not usually very fond. After dinner, Rosemary was just putting a generous helping on a plate for John when her mother said, ‘Really, darling, I don’t think we can feed Woppit on steak and kidney pie! I’ve put some fish scraps on the cracked dish in the meat safe for her. Wash the dishes for me, dear, will you? I’ve promised to go around to old Mrs Hobby to fit her for a new summer frock. You know she can’t get out much now. I’m afraid you’ll have to see to your own tea, darling. I hope you won’t be lonely.’

‘I shall be too busy looking for the kittens, Mummy. We simply must find them,’ said Rosemary.

When she reached the greenhouse carrying the cracked dish, she found Woppit curled up asleep on John’s knee. She was getting used to seeing the things that he was holding floating in the air. It seemed that the old cat had accepted his invisibility quite calmly. To her it was just another example of the unaccountable way that humans behave. She opened her eyes and jumped down at the word ‘dinner’, wriggling and writhing in a way that Rosemary found quite alarming until she realized that the cat was only rubbing herself against John’s invisible ankles. She explained about the dinner.

‘I’m afraid you and Woppit will have to share it.’

‘If so be you can swallow into an invisible stomach,’ said Woppit, ‘you can have all mine and welcome. You’ve done your best for my little furry favourites, according to your lights. I’ll say that for you.’

‘It’s very good of you,’ said John hastily, putting the dish of congealed scraps on to the floor, ‘but I wouldn’t dream of taking any of it!’

‘I managed to bring you some apples and biscuits,’ said Rosemary.

‘Well, that’ll have to do,’ said John in a resigned voice. ‘Now look here, Rosie,’ he went on between bites of apple, ‘we can’t do the counter-spell until tonight when the moon is up. Luckily it’s on the wane. I’ve looked it up in my diary, so this afternoon let’s concentrate onfinding the kittens.’

There was a low moan from Woppit.

‘Now all we know is that Mrs Cantrip sold them somewhere in Broomhurst this morning. Do shut up, Woppit. It’s no use moaning. The only clue we’ve got is what she said to Miss Dibdin, “Two pins in a packet, two peas in a peck.” Sounds nonsense to me.’

‘Look here, John,’ said Rosemary, ‘there is one thing we must do first, and that is to pay back Mrs Flackett. It’s a debt of honour.’

‘I’ve been thinking that, too,’ said John. ‘I keep feeling I’ve heard the name Flackett before somewhere. Suppose we find out where Adelaide Row is and go there straight away.’

‘And we can try to puzzle out what the “peas and pins” bit means as we go,’ said Rosemary.

They found Adelaide Row in a street guide, and John put the remains of the five shillings his father had given him in his pocket, and Rosemary asked Mr Featherstone if she might pick a bunch of flowers to give to Mrs Flackett. By the time they had reached Broomhurst and actually found the house, it was growing late in the afternoon. They had talked of nothing else, but they were no nearer to guessing what Mrs Cantrip had meant by‘Two pins in a packet, two peas in a peck.’

Adelaide Row consisted of half a dozen houses so small that they might have been built for rather large dolls. At the back, the railway rushed and roared. The front gardens were overshadowed by the high blank wall of a warehouse, which was only the width of a narrow path away from the garden gates. But the houses had been freshly whitewashed, and most of the gardens, which were separated from one another by low green palings, managed to grow marigolds and nasturtiums and Virginia stock. In fact, they had the feeling of houses that had once been in the country and were surprised to find themselves in the middle of a town.

Mrs Flackett was sitting outside her front door on a kitchen chair, popping peas into a colander. Hanging from a hook in the little porch was a canary singing its head off.

‘Yes, dearie?’ said the old woman, as Rosemary walked up the path. ‘What do you want? Why it’s you, Rosemary, isn’t it? Changed out of your nightie yet?’

Rosemary laughed and nodded.

‘I’ve come to pay back the money you lent us. You were so awfully good to us, about the cocoa and not telling. We thought you might like a bunch of flowers. I was allowed to pick one of everything there was in the garden. The feathery stuff is parsley that’s gone to seed. I think it’s pretty.’

‘Well!’ said Mrs Flackett heartily. ‘Isn’t that kind of you, dear! There’s nothing I like better than a bunch of flowers from a real garden. Shop ones is never the same somehow.’

The flowers were beginning to wilt, but she buried her round nose in them and gave a long sniff.

‘I’ll put ’em in a vase straight away. They’ll soon perk up. Where’s your friend John?’

‘I’m meeting him… presently,’ said Rosemary truthfully. She had arranged to meet him by the garden gate on which, from its jerky way of opening and shutting, she guessed he must be swinging.

‘Be a love and go on with them peas, will you? Just while I put the flowers in water.’

Mrs Flackett rose heavily to her feet and disappeared through the small front door. Rosemary knelt on the grass and went on popping the peas into the colander. It did not take her long to finish, and it is worth mentioning that she did not eat one.

‘Two peas in a peck,’ she said thoughtfully, plunging her hand into the colander and letting the peas trickle through her fingers.

‘Peas in a peck! Peas in a peck!’ sang the canary, up and down the scale like an opera singer. Rosemary looked up.

‘There’s some chickweed among the pea pods. Would you like it?’ she said, standing on the chair and holding it up for the bird to see.

The canary stopped in mid trill, cocked its black eye and said,‘You just try me!’

‘All right, here you are!’ said Rosemary and pushed it through the bars of the cage.

‘Very obliging of you, I’m sure,’ said the bird, making little stabbing pecks at the chickweed. ‘Quite common, hearing humans seem to be around here. But you aren’t like the one inside. He claps his hands over his ears and groans every time I say anything to him. Bad manners, I call it!’

‘Do you mean there is someone inside the house who understands you, too?’ asked Rosemary.

But before the canary could answer, Mrs Flackett was back with a large slice of homemade currant cake on a willow pattern plate.

‘Talking to my Joey, are you? He’s a rascal, he is!’ She looked up at the cage and whistled a tune and the bird whistled back.

‘She isn’t a hearing human,’ he sang. ‘But she as near understands what I say as makes no matter.’

‘I’ve brought you a bit of cake,’ went on Mrs Flackett. ‘You must be hungry coming all that way, and here’s a slice in a paper bag for your friend.’

‘Thank you!’ said Rosemary. ‘I’m very hungry. May I eat it now?’

‘I thought you didn’t like boys,’ she said presently. Mrs Flackett had lowered herself carefully into the chair.

‘Not in the way of business, I don’t,’ she said. ‘Messing up my nice clean stairs. Home’s different, and there’s boys and boys! Why bless me if you haven’t finished the peas for me! I thought a nice chump chop and new potatoes with them might tempt my poor Albert for his tea.’

She sighed.

‘Is he very ill?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Not to say ill in himself,’ said Mrs Flackett. ‘It’s just that he… well, he imagines things.’

‘What did I tell you?’ sang the canary up and down the scale. Rosemary gave him a quick look. She knew better than to answer aloud.

‘Stays in the house all day. He won’t even go to work, and him doing so well! Always good at his books he was since he was a lad. He won’t have the doctor; he won’t even speak to his young lady. Ever so upset she is. She works in the same business, in the perfumery. Me being a widow, and him all I’ve got, I worry terrible.’

‘But what does he imagine?’ asked Rosemary, brushing the last of the cake crumbs off her lap.

‘It all began when a black cat came into the shop, about a week ago. He says he distinctly heard it speak! Why you’ve dropped your plate, dearie!’

Rosemary picked it up, and her face was rather red.

‘He doesn’t work at Hedgem and Fudge, does he?’ she asked faintly.

‘Why, however did you guess?’

‘I… I think I’ve heard the name before,’ she answered lamely. ‘I must go now and meet John. Please, please don’t worry about Albert! I’m sure he’ll get well again!’

‘I’m sure I hope so, dear,’ said Mrs Flackett with a worried frown. Then she brightened. ‘But come again any time you’re passing!’ she called as Rosemary went down the path.

‘John! John! Where are you?’ Rosemary whispered cautiously when she reached the gate.

‘Here!’ he said just by her ear. ‘Where I said I’d be.’

‘Oh, John, it’s dreadful –!’

‘I know, I know. I heard it all,’ he said gloomily. ‘I got bored watching you stuffing currant cake, and the canary stuffing chickweed. It’s a funny thing, but wherever I look everyone is eating except me! Anyway, I came into the garden after a bit to see what was going on, and I heard. This magic is getting things in a mess!’

‘Mrs Flackett sent a piece of cake for you,’ said Rosemary, holding out the bag.

‘Oh, good!’ said John more cheerfully.

‘All the same, I popped her peas for her and I’ve got an idea –’

‘Come on!’ said John. ‘Let’s find somewhere quiet where nobody will notice you talking to thin air, or me making currant cake disappear.’

18

Calidor

They turned the corner at the end of Adelaide Row and walked along the path that ran by the railway cutting. There was a wire fence on one side and a high wall on the other. Nobody was about, except two small boys with eyes for nothing but train spotting, so they sat down on a flight of steps which led up to the road.

‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ said Rosemary. ‘The pins in a packet and peas in a peck is quite simple really. I suddenly thought of it when I had finished popping Mrs Flackett’s peas, and I saw them all in the colander. I think it just means that one pea is very like another, so that the best way to hide one special pea would be to put it with a peck of others. The same way with pins. One pin would be very hard to pick out in a packet.’

‘Mm,’ said John, in the fluffy voice of someone whose mouth is very full. ‘That’s very clever of you, Rosie! Well, the only place I can think of where there might be a whole lot of kittens is a pet shop.’

‘I believe there’s quite a big one in the new building in the market square. Mr Featherstone was telling me about it the other day. Come on! What are we waiting for?’

‘Me, to finish my cake!’ said John obstinately. ‘It’s all very well for you with steak and kidney pie inside you as well. I think that invisible insides need more food than other people’s.’

‘Your visible one seemed to think much the same thing,’ said Rosemary.

‘Oh well, if you imagine I’m just greedy,’ said John, and trailed off into huffy silence. It was broken by the sound of voices behind them. Two cats were trotting down the steps.

‘Well, I’ll do my best, Fuggins,’ said one of them, a sleek, rangy tabby. ‘A lot of Broomhurst fellows have slipped in quietly already. The Fallowhithe animals don’t seem to suspect. Simple creatures they are. Fish heads for us and tails for them when it’s over, I think her Royal Greyness said?’

His huffiness forgotten, John whispered,‘Don’t let on you understand!’

‘And the pick of the best hearthrugs for Broomhurst animals!’ said Fuggins. ‘Only a few days to wait now, my boy! There’s a gang of alley cats down here that I want to enroll. See you on… the night!’

Fuggins trotted purposefully away along the path, and the tabby, by means of a dustbin and a broken-down fence, leaped on to the wall and went along the top until he was out of sight.

‘There were cats running along the warehouse wall all the time you were talking to Mrs Flackett,’ said John. ‘Dozens of them.’

‘Don’t you remember? Carbonel told us that wall tops are the main roads of Cat Country.’

‘Things seem to be moving,’ said John.

Rosemary guessed that he had got up because of the shower of crumbs which suddenly fell at her feet.

‘Well, get on, girl!’ he said impatiently.

‘I like that!’ said Rosemary hotly.

‘That’s a good thing,’ said John maddeningly. ‘This way!’ and Rosemary swallowed her crossness and hurried after the sound of his retreating footsteps.

The pet shop was not difficult to find. It was in the new block of shops next to Mrs Flackett’s offices. They looked up as they passed. It was difficult by daylight to imagine its roof top was the same as the high place they had flown to with moon-flooded trees and milky stream. The shop they were looking for called itself ‘Chez Poodles’.

‘Oh, look! The whole of the window is full of kittens!’ said Rosemary.

They stared through the window. On the floor, which was covered with shavings, were kittens sleeping, kittens fighting, kittens playing. There were drifts and heaps of kittens, black, grey, tabby and tortoise-shell. From the roof hung a mobile, and as it swung, they jumped and patted the bells and balls that hung from the moving arms, to the delight of the little knot of people in the street outside.

‘But I can’t see Pergamond or Calidor!’ whispered John.

‘Look over there!’ said Rosemary.

Two kittens had begun a tussle in a corner, a black with white paws and a grey. It was not easy to distinguish them clearly as they rolled and tumbled, but there was something about the jaunty way in which the black one hurled himself on the grey which seemed familiar. By the time that John was looking in the right direction, half a dozen more kittens had thrown themselves into the fight, and the black cat was hidden beneath a pile of thrusting noses and kicking legs.

‘I’m sure it was Calidor!’ said Rosemary.

As she spoke, the black kitten crawled out from the bottom of the pile, and shaking each paw in turn, looked with interest at the mound of cats, still milling on top of one another.

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‘Go in and buy him, now!’ said John, hurriedly pushing a handful of small change into Rosemary’s hand. ‘I’ll wait outside.’

But as he spoke a white-overalled arm leaned over the wire barrier at the back of the window, and a hand picked up the black kitten by the scruff of his neck, and lifted him out of sight.

‘Quick!’ said John.

Rosemary dashed into the shop. By the window stood the assistant still holding Calidor by the scruff of his neck, while on the other hand she rested his hind legs through which curled his short tail.

‘The three royal white hairs!’ said Rosemary to herself. ‘Calidor!’ she said softly. ‘It’s me, Rosemary!’

The kitten gave a little soundless mew, and the two people who had been examining him, looked round. One was a small plump woman in a very fashionable but extremely unbecoming hat, and very high heels. The other was a girl of about Rosemary’s age. But there the likeness ended, for she looked as though she had never been dirty in her life, and not one of the pale hairs of her ponytail was out of place. It must be admitted that one of Rosemary’s plaits was in the knotted condition that results from pushing up the bow when it gets loose, instead of re-tying it, and there was a smudge on her cheek.

‘Now do make up your mind, Dossy darling! First you want a grey kitten, and then a ginger, and now you want a black! Daddy said you could have one if you were good at the dentist’s, and really you weren’t very good so you shouldn’t have one at all. But I do so hate to see her little face cloud over!’ the woman went on to the assistant. But even with the prospect of a kitten that she did not deserve, Dossy’s ‘little face’ seemed clouded. Rosemary thought she looked down-right cross.

‘I want a white kitten!’ announced Dossy.

‘I’m afraid it just happens that we haven’t one in the shop,’ said the assistant with weary politeness. ‘Not one.’

‘Oh, please!’ said Rosemary, who felt she could not wait a minute longer. ‘May I have the black kitten? How much is it?’

But this was all that was needed to get Dossy to make up her mind.

‘You can’t have it!’ she said. ‘I’m buying it.’

‘But you said you wanted a white one, and I must have it for a special reason!’ said Rosemary desperately. ‘It’s a very special kitten!’

‘Well then, if it’s so very special, it’s all the more reason why I should have it,’ said Dossy tartly.

‘I think my little girl must have first choice,’ said the woman. ‘We’ll take the little black fellow after all!’ She turned to the assistant and paid over the money.

‘Please, may I hold him, just one minute?’ said Rosemary unhappily. She took the little animal in both hands and held him to her cheek. He felt very small beneath his fluff of coal black fur.

‘You’ll have to go with her,’ she whispered.

‘I don’t want to, I don’t like her!’ said Calidor.

‘We’ll rescue you somehow. John is outside. You won’t be able to see him because he is invisible. But I know he’ll think of something.’

Calidor gave a sad little mew.

‘Cheer up,’ said Rosemary. ‘Remember you are a royal kitten and you must be brave. Couldn’t you manage a little purr? That’s better! Where is Pergamond?’

‘In a cage at the back of the shop by herself. I’m so glad to see you, Rosie!’ he said. Calidor gave her cheek a little lick.

Dossy was looking on curiously.

‘Mother!’ she said in an aggrieved voice. ‘That girl’s talking to my kitten!’

‘Take him to the car, darling, and show him to Daddy. I shan’t be a minute.’

Rosemary handed Calidor over and followed Dossy’s beautifully tailored but irritating back out of the shop.

‘All right, I’m here!’ whispered John’s voice beside her.

‘She’s bought him!’ said Rosemary. ‘And now they’re going off in a car and we don’t know where to!’

‘We’ll soon find out!’ said John.

‘But how?’

‘I’m going too! No one will see me! What a gorgeous car! I’ve always wanted to go in one of those high-powered things, and now’s my chance!’

‘I must stay here,’ said Rosemary. ‘Pergamond’s at the back of the shop. Good luck, John!’

‘Good luck, Rosie!’

The plump woman was getting into the front seat of the car. There was plenty of room for three. Rosemary saw the door at the back open and close noiselessly. She waved as the car slid smoothly into the traffic.

‘Miss Dibdin was right. Being invisible has got its uses,’ said Rosemary, and turned and went back into the pet shop.

19

The Pet Shop

At any other time Rosemary felt she could have spent a long while quite happily looking round the shop. She went past the tanks of tropical fish which lined the side opposite the counter. Out of the corner of her eye she could see their jewelled shapes dart and hover in each small, watery world, but she walked resolutely by and pushed through the bead curtain which divided the shop from the animal cages. The noise here was deafening. It reminded her of Fairfax Market on Saturday night with all the stallholders shouting their wares: only here each animal was trying to sell itself. Only the birds sang and gossiped to each other. It mattered little to them in what house their cages stood.

‘Buy me! Buy me!’ shouted a corgi puppy.

‘Only ten shillings! Come along, come along!’ called a pair of guinea pigs.

A case of hamsters squeaked,‘Buy! Buy! Buy!’ and a large, buck rabbit wrinkled its nose in disdain at having to announce that it was going for fifteen and six.

A cockatoo whistled shrilly,‘All hands to the pump! How de do! How de do! How de do!’ and rocked himself violently from side to side.

‘Very well, thank you!’ said Rosemary politely.

‘Put a sock in it!’ said the cockatoo rudely, and made clicking noises with its tongue.

Rosemary ignored him and searched the cages anxiously for Pergamond. She asked two Siamese cats if they had seen her. They stared insolently, and said something which she could not understand, presumably in Siamese. The few people who were looking at the animals as well, were unlikely to hear her whispered inquiries in the general hubbub.

Next she asked a tortoise. He looked up heavily from a lettuce leaf and said in a slow, deep voice,‘I don’t know nothing about no kittens. But if it’s tortoise-shell you want, why not have a tortoise in it? Have me!’ And she realized by the curious jerking of its shell that the creature was laughing at what it thought was a joke. Rosemary shook her head.

‘Pity,’ said the tortoise, and went on eating lettuce.

She turned to a cage of white mice. But at the word‘kitten’ there was a flick of tails and whiskers, and they all disappeared into a round hole in a wooden box at the back of the cage.

‘Polly put the kettle on,’ shrieked the cockatoo, and rattled its beak on the perch.

‘A tortoise-shell kitten!’ yapped a fox terrier puppy. ‘Kittens? Yah! You want a puppy!’ and he turned to bowl over his companion who had nipped him in the leg.

‘But I keep telling you!’ said Rosemary desperately. ‘All I want is a kitten, and you won’t listen!’

For a moment she was alone in the shop.

‘Second from the left, top row!’ said a voice. It was the cockatoo. He was standing motionless, his yellow crest thrust forward. Rosemary went up to his perch. When she first saw him she had thought he was rather like a clown at a circus. Now he looked suddenly very wise and very dignified.

‘If I’d known you were a hearing human I should never have tried that “Polly-put-the-kettle-on” stuff on you. That’s just in the way of business. I must give my public what it wants, you know. They put a tortoise-shell kitten up there in a cage by herself, because of her markings. Quite rare, apparently.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ said Rosemary gratefully and ran to look.

‘Don’t mention it!’ said the cockatoo, and as an old lady with a small boy came in through the bead curtain he shrieked, ‘All hands to the pump! How de do! How de do! How de do!’ to the small boy’s delight.

At the back of the second cage from the left, in the top row, was a small, furry, tortoise-shell ball.

‘Pergamond! It’s me, Rosemary! Do wake up, Pergamond!’

The kitten uncurled herself, and yawned so wide that Rosemary could see the little pink wrinkles on the roof of her mouth.

‘What a long time you’ve been,’ she said sleepily. ‘But I knew you’d come!’ and she got up and rubbed herself against the cage door. Rosemary stroked her with a single finger, which was all she could poke through.

‘How much are you, Pergamond dear?’

‘Six shillings,’ she said proudly.

‘Oh no!’ said Rosemary in dismay. ‘I’ve only got four and elevenpence and an Irish halfpenny!’

‘Well, you can’t expect me to go for tuppence,’ said the kitten grandly. ‘Not rare markingsand royalty!’

‘Ssh!’ said Rosemary, looking around nervously. ‘Don’t let anyone know who you are!’

‘Well, I don’t see –’ began Pergamond, and broke off as the corgi puppy next door hurled himself at the dividing wire netting, yapping defiance at all kittens. Undaunted, Pergamond advanced on him, spitting and swearing.

‘Pergamond!’ said Rosemary in a shocked voice. ‘What would Woppit say?’

‘You can’t expect anything else,’ said the cockatoo. ‘A very mixed lot here! They pick up all sorts of expressions. I suppose,’ he went on, sidling toward her, ‘as well as a kitten you wouldn’t be wanting a cockatoo? Thirty pounds and cheap at the price.’

‘Thirty pounds! Why I haven’t even six shillings to buy my kitten. What can I do?’

‘Oh well!’ said the cockatoo, and sighed deeply. Then he went on, ‘You might consult the boss, Bodkin is the name. Not a bad sort as a rule! But you’re out of luck today, he’s got toothache.’

Rosemary returned to the comparative quiet of the shop where a large man in a white overall was selling a guinea pig to a girl. She waited until the girl had gone and then she said,‘Excuse me, but what do your customers usually do when they find they haven’t got quite enough money to buy something?’

‘Go away until they can get it,’ said Mr Bodkin shortly, and shut the drawer of the till with a snap.

Rosemary had to admit to herself that he was quite right.

20

‘All Hands to the Pump’

Rosemary went back to the cockatoo. He was sitting hunched on his perch with his feathers fluffed out and his eyes closed.

‘Can you think of something I can do?’ she asked him. ‘I must have that particular kitten most specially, and when you aren’t, well, giving your public what it wants, you seem so wise.’

The cockatoo opened his eyes. He seemed not displeased. Then he said,‘Excuse me!’ sidled to the other end of his perch and made a popping noise like a cork being pulled out, followed by a sound like water coming out of a bottle. All this was for the benefit of a small girl with an elderly woman. Then he sidled back again.

‘So many demands on my time – that’s the worst of being a public figure,’ he said languidly, but keeping a sharp lookout for anyone else who might watch him perform. ‘Now then, your little problem. Let me think.’

His grey wrinkled lids lowered over his bright eyes, and Rosemary was afraid he was asleep. But he suddenly sat up, shrieked,‘Whoops-a-daisy!’ and hanging from his perch with his black beak, turned a somersault. Then, once more as grave as a professor, he said, ‘I’ve got it, and it will make a very touching performance. Now listen to me. Do you see the fifth link of the chain from the collar on my leg?’ Rosemary looked.

‘It’s very thin,’ she said.

‘Precisely,’ said the bird. ‘It took me six months to do it. Every twenty years or so I plan a little excursion.’

‘You mean you escape?’

‘Bless you, no! I always come back again, but it breaks the monotony. Do you think you could snap that link?’

The only people near were an old man with two children who were choosing a canary. They were far too occupied to notice Rosemary put up her hand to the chain. The link was so thin that it broke with hardly any pressure.

‘I was waiting for a really good audience,’ said the cockatoo, ‘but I’m willing to oblige you this afternoon. You’re not used to these public performances, I dare say, but I’m sure they’ll make allowances. Now, go over there and talk to your kitten. You’d better not be near me. No one must guess it’s a double act, so watch out for the signal.’

Rosemary felt it was no use asking questions, though she would like to have asked what the signal would be. However, she did as she was told. She went across to Pergamond, and had barely explained what had happened to John and Calidor when there was a screech from the cockatoo.

‘Polly put the kettle on!’ he screamed. ‘Oops-a-daisy!’ And with a flutter of wings he left his perch and flew to the top of the highest cage in the shop, noisily clanking his broken chain. With his feathers fluffed up he bowed repeatedly, and demanded from the delighted audience below, ‘How de do? How de do? How de do?’

The animals set up an excited yapping, mewing, barking and twittering. Only the tortoise went on quietly eating his lettuce. A number of people had come in to see what the laughter was about, and Mr Bodkin poked his head through the bead curtain. When he saw the cockatoo he gasped, and, pushing his way through the crowd, said under his breath,‘Please to keep quiet – a most valuable bird – no sudden movement please or you may startle it!’ Then, raising a cautious hand, ‘Cockie! Cockie! Good Cockie!’ he said anxiously.

‘Put a sock in it! Put a sock in it!’ said Cockie, and emptied three imaginary bottles in quick succession.

Forgetting Mr Bodkin’s warning, the little knot of people below shouted with laughter, and at the sudden noise the bird fluttered from the top of the cage to the top of the open window which looked over the yard. With yellow crest pushed forward he danced like a boxer waiting for an opening.

‘All hands to the pump!’ he shrieked, and then in his professor voice that only the animals and Rosemary understood, ‘Well, what are you waiting for, girl? Get on with it. Turn right outside the shop and down the alley into the yard, and hurry up about it or someone else will catch me. What do you think I’m doing this for? No feeling for drama, you haven’t!’

Rosemary had forgotten for a moment that she was anything but part of the audience which was rapidly swelling to a small crowd, but she pulled herself together, slipped out of the shop and down the alleyway into the yard. Through the window she was just in time to see Mr Bodkin give a sudden grab at the cockatoo’s dangling chain. With an outraged squawk Cockie flew out into the yard.

He landed on top of a tall, empty crate a few feet away from Rosemary.

‘Perhaps it’s just as well you didn’t buy me,’ he said. ‘I should probably moult in private life. Give me only a small audience and it goes to my head.’

There was the sound of running footsteps coming down the alley.‘You see how it is? A sought-after public figure – can’t call my life my own!’ he went on in an affected voice.

Mr Bodkin, fired by some idea of climbing through the window, had stuck half way.

‘You there! Catch him! Don’t let him escape!’ he called to Rosemary. ‘Five shillings reward if you’ll only get him!’

Rosemary made a grab and was within an ace of catching the chain, but Cockie whisked it away just in time.

‘Don’t you dare!’ he said, and squawked indignantly as he sidled away from her along the crate.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Rosemary in bewilderment. ‘I thought you wanted me to catch you!’

‘At five shillings? Insulting I call it! Don’t you dare do it until you’ve beaten him up to fifteen shillings at the very least.’

‘Oh dear!’ thought Rosemary. The bird by this time was sitting on the gutter of the outhouse that stood in a corner of the yard, which by this time was full of people. The crowd laughed and chattered and offered advice.

‘Dora!’ called Mr Bodkin to the overalled assistant who was also in the yard. ‘Fetch a ladder!’

Several people went off with her to find one. Cautiously, Cockie clambered first on to the roof, and then up on to the coping which edged the gable end.

Rosemary was already pushing the crate up against the outhouse wall. By climbing on to the top of it, she was level with the gutter at the edge of the roof.‘I hope to goodness it will hold me,’ she said to herself anxiously.

‘Good girl!’ called Mr Bodkin excitedly. ‘Go carefully, go carefully! Ten shillings if you do it.’

The gutter held as she put her weight on it. Slowly and painfully Rosemary pulled herself up the roof by holding on to the coping stone, but as she advanced, Cockie warily climbed higher. Once she slipped and the crowd below gasped.

‘He said… ten shillings,’ pleaded Rosemary breathlessly. ‘Let me… catch you… Cockie! I could… buy my kitten now!’

‘And what about me?’ said the cockatoo. ‘Ten shillings indeed! I’ve got my pride. Not a penny under fifteen. You’re doing quite nicely. Just keep on, but don’t look down!’

The bird had reached the ridge of the roof by now, and like an actor in the centre of the stage he fluffed out his feathers, bowed repeatedly to the crowd, and while he did a shuffling kind of dance screeched,‘Polly put the kettle on! All hands to the pump! How de do? How de do? How de do?’ Then he pulled half a dozen corks. The people below laughed and clapped and Cockie bowed again. He was clearly having the time of his life.

Mr Bodkin called anxiously,‘Take care! Take care! Fifteen shillings if you catch him now!’

It was then that Rosemary made the mistake of looking down. She saw the faces tilted up to watch her and the hard paving stones of the yard a long way below, and for the first time she realized how high she was. Hastily she looked away, but the damage was done. Her knees began to shake and her inside suddenly felt as though it was not there.

‘Cockie! I can’t!’ she said faintly. She could feel her feet slipping slowly on the tiles. She gave a frantic lurch, clutched with both hands, and found that one of them had gripped the ridge of the roof, and the other had caught the cockatoo’s broken chain. The crowd gasped and cheered as though they were at the circus, as, painfully, she pulled herself astride the ridge.

‘Not bad. Not bad at all. I didn’t think you had it in you,’ said Cockie from his perch on her shoulder. Then he bowed to the clapping crowd and screamed, ‘Put a sock in it!’

By this time Dora and her helpers had arrived with the ladder. They pushed it up on to the roof with the bottom end fixed against the gutter, and Rosemary thankfully clambered down. When she reached the edge of the roof, willing hands helped her to the ground. The crowd patted her on the back and told her how brave she was, and Rosemary wished they would go away. Presently they did, and Mr Bodkin and Dora took her into the shop by a side door. They put Cockie back on his perch and they bathed Rosemary’s scraped knees and let her wash her hands, which were quite black. Then Mr Bodkin said, ‘I can’t thank you enough, my dear. You are a very brave girl. Worth his weight in gold to me, that bird. Brings no end of people to the shop. Would you know what to do with a pound note if I gave it to you?’

‘Oh yes!’ said Rosemary. ‘I should buy the tortoise-shell kitten in the cage at the back of the shop.’

Mr Bodkin laughed, but he fetched Pergamond, and because Rosemary’s hands were full of purring, tortoise-shell kitten, he slipped a ten shilling note and two half crowns as well into the pocket of her gingham dress.

‘Take care of the kitten. It’s a good one,’ he said.

‘I will! Oh, I will!’ she answered feelingly. Cockie was sitting on his perch putting his feathers in order.

‘Goodbye!’ she said. ‘And thank you!’

‘Put a sock in it!’ said the bird, but unnoticed by Mr Bodkin one grey eye had come down in an unmistakable wink.

21

Dossy

When Rosemary reached home she took Pergamond straight upstairs.

‘Why, darling, where have you been? I was begining to grow anxious,’ said Mrs Brown.

‘I’ve found one of the kittens, Mother. It’s Pergamond.’

‘Rosie, I’m so glad!’ said her mother.

‘May I keep her upstairs with us, just for the night?’ begged Rosemary. ‘John said he didn’t think he’d be back until tomorrow, and she would be company for me. Besides, I shouldn’t sleep a wink if she was in the greenhouse. You see she was stolen and sold to a pet shop. I found her there!’

Mrs Brown listened with astonishment while Rosemary told her story, leaving out the magic bits and the complimentary remarks of Mr Bodkin and the crowd of people.

‘I’ve got a present for you,’ she ended. ‘A box of peppermint creams.’

‘My favourite!’ said Mrs Brown, and by a lucky chance they were Rosemary’s favourite, too.

‘I’m just going down to tell Woppit about Pergamond,’ she said rather indistinctly, because of course her mother had offered her a peppermint cream.

Mrs Brown laughed.‘Don’t be long, dear, supper is nearly ready.’

Woppit was sitting brooding in the greenhouse, with her paws tucked in, so that she looked like a rather untidy foot warmer. She had never ceased to reproach herself for the loss of the kittens. When she heard that Pergamond was safe and that at least they knew where Calidor was, she became a different animal. Her purr was like tearing calico, and she rubbed herself against Rosemary’s legs with such force that she nearly knocked her over.

‘So I thought you had better go and tell Queen Blandamour straight away,’ ended Rosemary. ‘Or would you like your supper first?’

‘As if I’d let bite or sup pass my lips,’ said Woppit, ‘before I told Her Majesty the blessed news! Not that I couldn’t fancy something tasty when I get back, mind. A nice bit of liver, minced medium fine, wouldn’t come amiss.’

Rosemary watched the untidy old animal leap to the top of the garden wall with surprising ease, and run along it till she was out of sight. Then she went back to the flat.

‘All the same, I do wish I knew what was happening to John,’ she whispered to Pergamond, who was warming her overfull stomach by the fire, for the evening was chilly.

From the back seat of the car, John had looked through the window behind him at the dwindling figure of Rosemary, as she stood outside the pet shop. She looked rather forlorn standing there by herself on the edge of the pavement, so he waved, until he remembered that she could not see him.

‘It wouldn’t make any difference to her if I stood on my head!’ he said gloomily to himself.

He turned round and studied the backs of the three heads in front of him. There was Dossy’s father with a bowler and a red sort of neck that suggested he was not a very patient sort of person; there was Dossy’s mother with the carefully waved, blue hair under the very fashionable hat; there was Dossy’s own sleek, fair head in between with the kitten on her shoulder. Calidor was looking rather miserably over the back of the seat, unaware that help was so near. Very carefully John put his mouth as near to the kitten as he could and whispered, ‘Cheer up, it’s me, John! I’m in the back of the car. You can’t see me because I’m invisible!’

Calidor started, and to keep his balance stuck his claws into Dossy’s shoulder. Dossy shrieked.

‘For goodness’ sake!’ said her father irritably. He did not care for sudden squeals when he was driving through busy traffic.

‘He scratched me, Mother!’ said Dossy tearfully, and lifting the kitten on to her knee gave him a slap. It was not a hard slap, but it upset his balance again so that once more he had to dig in his claws to prevent himself from falling off.

Once more Dossy shrieked.

‘For mercy’s sake put that cat in the back where it can’t scratch you!’ said her father crossly.

‘It’s a horrible kitten!’ complained Dossy, dropping Calidor into the back of the car. ‘It scratched me twice! I wish I’d chosen the ginger one!’

‘I wish you’d chosen a goldfish. At least that couldn’t scratch,’ growled her father.

‘Now, Charlie!’ said Dossy’s mother. ‘The poor child must have something to amuse her while the television is out of order.’

John ignored the argument that seemed to be starting in the front seat, and putting Calidor on the rug which lay folded beside him, whispered,‘It’s all right, Calidor, I’ll get you out of here somehow. You needn’t be afraid.’

‘I’m not afraid… exactly,’ said Calidor stoutly. ‘But it does make it easier to be brave, now you’re here.’

He snuggled up against John’s invisible grey flannel shorts, and after giving a few halfhearted licks to his shirt front to show how self-possessed he was, under John’s stroking fingers he fell asleep. The powerful car had slipped with surprising speed out of the town and into the kind of suburb which has big houses built in large gardens.

‘I hope to goodness they aren’t going for miles and miles,’ said John to himself.

He was relieved to hear Dossy’s father say, ‘Nearly home. You’ll be pretty late for tea, Doss. I thought you were expecting someone?’

‘Good heavens, I’d clean forgotten! But I dare say it doesn’t matter,’ said his wife comfortably.

‘It’s only Milly,’ said Dossy in a bored voice. ‘I expect she’ll come in that awful old blue cotton frock again.’

‘I think it’s the only best one she has. You musn’t give yourself airs, darling, because you are a lucky little girl with lots of pretty things!’ said her mother.

‘She seems a nice kid to me. Plenty of go in her,’ said Dossy’s father. ‘I can’t think why you don’t like her.’

‘She always wants to play such silly games,’ said Dossy. ‘Wanting to pretend something or other all the time.’

John decided at once that he, too, would like Milly.

‘Well, don’t forget she’s your guest, darling,’ said Dossy’s mother. ‘You must play her games, too. I sometimes wonder if you don’t have a teeny, weeny bit too much of your own way. Look, there is Milly!’

‘She’s sitting on our gate!’ said Dossy. ‘And sheis wearing that old blue thing.’

As the car drew up, Milly jumped down and opened the gate for them. She was a plump person with short red hair, and a great many freckles.

‘I got tired of waiting inside,’ she explained. ‘I was pretending I was a cowboy.’

Dossy sniffed, but her father chuckled.‘Hop in the back, Milly, and we’ll give you a ride up the drive.’

John had barely time to squeeze himself into a corner before she got in.

‘You haven’t noticed our new car!’ said Dossy in a huffy voice. But Milly might not have heard. She had eyes for nothing but Calidor. ‘What a darling kitten! What’s his name? Where did he come from?’

‘He’s mine… because… because I was good at the dentist’s.’ Dossy had the grace to go rather red as she said this. ‘I don’t like him very much,’ she went on. ‘He scratched me twice, and he hasn’t purred once.’

‘Perhaps he hasn’t anything to purr about. Can we go to the kitchen and get him some milk?’

‘Mrs Parkin doesn’t like children bothering around in the kitchen,’ said Dossy’s mother firmly. ‘He shall have some at tea time. Here we are. Now run along in and wash your hands.’

John was determined not to let Calidor out of his sight. He followed the two girls into the house, narrowly missing getting himself slammed in the door of the car by the unsuspecting Milly. Dossy carried Calidor. They took him with them into the bathroom, which was panelled with black marble and pink trimmings. John followed. His hands were so dirty that he tried to wash them, too, but Dossy pulled the plug out before he had finished. The dirty marks on the pink towel were blamed on Milly. Next he followed them to Dossy’s bedroom, so that Milly could be shown her new party dress. It was all rather embarrassing, because he felt he was eavesdropping, so he was relieved when a gong interrupted and they went downstairs to tea. Calidor came down on Milly’s shoulder, wobbling uncomfortably as she bounced from step to step. His ears were flattened crossly.

‘I’ve got legs of my own, haven’t I? Why can’t they put me down?’ he muttered to John following closely behind.

‘Well, at least you’ll get your saucer of milk,’ whispered John. ‘I shan’t get anything at all!’

This time it was almost more than John could bear. There were a great many little sandwiches and delicious cakes. They sat on low chairs, and Milly found it difficult to manage a very small plate on her knee, a lace-edged napkin, a cream horn and a special fork to eat it with. Luckily for John, half the cream horn slid on to the floor. Although he would have hesitated to take a cake from the table, which would be like stealing, he felt that half a cream horn on the floor was different, and he picked it up and ate it thankfully. Milly was equally thankful to find it was not there when she looked furtively down, though she was rather puzzled.

Calidor lapped milk politely from a china saucer in a way that would have warmed the heart of Woppit. He even remembered‘to purr his grace’.

After tea the two girls were sent into the garden to play. They scooped up the indignant Calidor from the cushion on which he had settled down to sleep, and Dossy’s mother called after them, ‘Milly’s games this time, darling!’

22

The Queen of Sheba

It was a beautiful garden. Leaving the flower beds behind, the two girls, with John close behind them, ran down the lawn which sloped toward a small lake. It lay cool and still in the evening light. The reflections of the trees which grew on the farther side were only broken by the fish that occasionally rose with a little‘plop’. John could not quite catch what they said as they leaped from the shining surface. A blackbird perched on a willow tree sang a song to the praise of summer evenings, and this evening in particular.

The girls made their way to a little paved terrace with stone steps which led down into the water where a punt lay moored invitingly. The nameSwallow was painted on her side.

‘Let’s go in it!’ said Milly.

‘I’m not allowed to, not without a grownup, until I can swim. It’s my turn to carry the kitten!’ said Dossy, and she took him clumsily from Milly’s shoulder.

‘Why can’t they leave me alone?’ grumbled Calidor. His whiskers were at sixes and sevens and his fur was ruffled.

There was a clump of foxgloves growing by the boathouse. Milly picked up two fallen flowers and perched one on each of the kitten’s ears. He looked so funny that they both laughed. Calidor twitched the flowers off angrily.

‘Funny, am I?’ he growled furiously. ‘Well, I’ve got claws I have, and if you don’t –’

‘Steady on, Calidor!’ said John. ‘Stick it out until we can get away. We’ve got to wait our chance.’

‘Let’s play something,’ said Milly. ‘Let’s pretend –’

‘Oh, no!’ broke in Dossy. ‘Well, I suppose we must if you want to,’ she went on. ‘Mother said I had to play your games this time.’

‘Don’t you ever pretend anything?’ asked Milly curiously.

There was a pause, then Dossy said,‘Only one thing, sometimes.’ She flushed. ‘Promise you won’t laugh if I tell you?’

‘Promise!’

‘Well, sometimes I pretend I’m the best-dressed girl in Broomhurst.’

‘Gosh, how ghastly!’ said Milly frankly. ‘I’m not laughing, honestly I’m not,’ she went on hurriedly. ‘I say, I know a gorgeous game we could play. Let’s pretend you’re the Queen of Sheba! She was the best-dressed woman in the Bible, at least I think she was, and she was very beautiful, and she came sailing down the Nile – that could be the lake – to see King Solomon because of his wisdom – that would be me – and brought him rare gifts.’

‘But I don’t –’ began Dossy.

‘You go and dress up. I’m sure you can find some queenly things somewhere, old ones of your mother’s. There are some striped towels in the boathouse which will do beautifully for me!’ Milly said.

Dossy pushed the kitten into Milly’s arms and then she ran, quite quickly, back to the house. John watched Milly rather enviously. Humming between her teeth, she investigated the bathing things in the boathouse. This was just the sort of game he would have enjoyed playing himself. In fact, he was so interested that he forgot to seize the opportunity to pick up Calidor and make off. Instead he watched Milly. First she put the kitten in the punt to keep him safe. He put his paws on the gunwale and peered over the side. ‘Water!’ he said with disgust, and dropped back hastily on to the cushions.

Next, Milly put on a magnificently patterned bathing wrap belonging to Dossy’s father. It was much too large for her – he was a big man – so she tied a cushion on underneath to fill it out. ‘More dignified if I look fatter, too,’ she said to herself. Then she took a bathing towel and twisted it around her head into a turban.

When she had done this, she took out a folding deckchair, and with some difficulty, because of her trailing robe and the tied-on cushion, set it on the flat nose of the punt. Then she draped another towel over the chair and filled the seat with cushions. The remaining cushions she piled in the punt. Calidor, recovered from his sulks, happily chased the trailing cord of King Solomon’s robe. John could not resist tweaking a towel here, and a cushion there, to help arrange things. It really did look rather oriental, he thought. They were all so busy that they did not hear Dossy’s return.

‘Will I do?’ she said suddenly behind them.

They turned around.

Instead of putting on some old dress of her mother’s as Milly expected, she was wearing her new party frock. From its high waist the skirts, scattered with shining beads, fell in a blue cascade to her silver slippers. Her pale gold hair, loosened from its ponytail, fell on to her shoulders, and was held in place on the top of her head by a sparkling necklace of her mother’s, which she wore as a shimmering crown. A wide silver scarf pinned to her shoulders billowed behind her as she walked. Her pale cheeks were flushed.

‘Dossy! You are beautiful!’ said Milly in an awed voice.

Even John said to himself,‘She doesn’t look half bad.’

Milly stood up and bowed as low as she could over the cushions.

‘Welcome, O Queen of Sheba!’ she said. ‘Your royal barge awaits you! Behold your throne!’

She waved, with dignity, toward the garden chair on the end of the punt.

The Queen of Sheba stepped carefully down, narrowly missing John as she landed.

Milly went on,‘Now, you say, “O Solomon, live forever!”’

‘O Solomon, live forever!’ repeated Dossy obediently.

Solomon took the hand of the Queen of Sheba and, stumbling a little over her trailing robe, led her to the‘throne’ on the end of the punt.

The Queen of Sheba sat down gingerly.

‘Now you say, “O King, I bring you precious gifts!”’ She paused. ‘Go on, say it!’

‘But I don’t. I haven’t brought anything to give you,’ said Dossy.

‘Well, give me the kitten then. You can pretend it isn’t an ordinary cat but some strange, rare animal.’

She bundled Calidor on to Dossy’s lap. His ruffled head appeared with a protesting ‘mew!’ among the blue folds of the party dress.

‘An ordinary cat indeed! Me, a kitten of the royal blood! I dare say –’ began Calidor. But John heard no more, for the Queen of Sheba bundled the ‘rare animal’ back again to King Solomon. In her anxiety lest he should catch his claws in the blue dress, she had not noticed that she was holding him upside down.

King Solomon turned to the imaginary oarsmen of the royal barge and waved imperiously,‘To your oars, men, and row us to the Palace of a Thousand Jewels!’

Milly really did it very well, thought John, and quite carried away he pulled the painter free and gave a vigorous shove off. The punt shot out into the lake.

‘Whatever have you done?’ gasped Dossy.

Milly looked puzzled.

‘I didn’t do anything – I was only pretending. I didn’t really mean the barge to move. It must have been a current or something. But there’s no need to panic. We can punt ourselves back again.’

She looked for the pole.

‘I told you I wasn’t allowed to use the punt, and I shall get into frightful trouble for putting on my party frock as well!’ wailed Dossy. ‘And if Mother’s silver scarf gets splashed she’ll be simply furious. Perhaps if we get home quickly I can put the things back without anyone knowing!’

Milly looked up and her face was worried.

‘I’m awfully sorry. The punt pole isn’t here, or the paddles either!’ she said. ‘I don’t see how we can get back.’

Dossy burst into tears.‘I think this is a beastly game. It’s all this silly pretending,’ she wailed.

‘It was rather queer, the barge sailing off when I told it to,’ said Milly uneasily.

John felt thoroughly uncomfortable. He would have liked to explain that it was all his fault and nothing to do with Milly’s pretending, but of course that was not possible.

The punt slowed down at last until it ceased to move. The little slapping waves beneath their bows grew fainter and fainter until they died away altogether.

‘It’s not really so bad,’ said Milly. ‘They’ll be sure to come and look for us soon. Let’s fill in time by playing something else. Oh, look, fish! Did you see that one leap right out, over there! Let’s pretend it’s an enchanted lake and that there is a sea serpent living in its fathomless depths!’

‘Oh, let’s not!’ sniffed Dossy, looking round nervously. She was still sitting huddled in the throne on the end of the punt. The shadows of the trees were lengthening over the lake. Suddenly a fish leaped from the water so near that Dossy, who was thinking uneasily of sea serpents, gave a startled gasp and jumped to her feet, pushing the chair back as she did so. Milly made a grab to stop it falling overboard, but catching her foot in her trailing robe, she lurched and fell heavily against Dossy, who gave a piercing shriek. For a moment they tottered on the edge together, then with a tremendous splash the two girls, and the chair, fell into the water. The punt lurched dangerously.

‘Out of the way!’ said John to Calidor, who was peering over with great interest. ‘Dossy can’t swim – I’m going in after her!’

There was a splash which showered the watching kitten, and a sudden cleft in the water which showed where John must have dived. Calidor could see the Queen of Sheba’s throne bobbing up and down half out of the water, accompanied by three sodden cushions. Then Milly’s spluttering head appeared above the surface.

‘It’s all right, Dossy, it’s not deep!’ she gasped, looking anxiously around. She was relieved to see Dossy’s head appear, but only long enough to let out another shriek before it disappeared again.

Milly paddled frantically toward the widening circle of ripples which showed where Dossy had surfaced; and then a curious sight made her draw up and tread water. Dossy’s head had come to the surface again, and apparently with nothing to account for it, a series of small splashes, followed by what looked like a miniature tidal wave bore down upon her. Milly, of course, had no idea that it was caused by the swimming of the invisible John. She was only aware thatthe steadily screaming Dossy rose half out of the water, made her way back to the punt without showing any signs of swimming and, as though pushed up by some submarine volcano, rose in a surge of foam and tumbled on to the floor of theSwallow.

Milly had no time to wonder. She was hanging on to the edge of the punt by now. She had managed to rid herself of the hampering folds of the bathing gown, but with the waterlogged cushion still tied to her waist, she had not the strength to pull herself up.

‘Help!’ she called forlornly, and as though in response something seemed to give her a great heave from below, and she fell thankfully beside Dossy in the bottom of the punt. For a minute she lay there panting, then slowly she sat up. Dossy lay sobbing in a pool of water. The party frock was ruined, its sodden folds streaked with water weed. The shining crown was gone and the silver scarf lay torn and muddy beside her.

‘It’s all your fault, Milly!’ she sobbed. ‘First you pretended the boat was going to move, and it did. Then you pretended the lake was enchanted, and it was. It must be. I felt someone lift me up and push me into the punt, and there wasn’t anyone there at all. Well, you’d better pretendsomebody to push us back to the steps or we shall both die from double pneumonia!’ Dossy lay down and cried again.

Milly swallowed hard. She had to admit it had been rather odd, and there was the mysterious heave that something had given her when she found she could not climb back into the punt.

‘I suppose it might have been the sea serpent I imagined,’ she said to herself, looking nervously over the side.

She pushed a strand of dripping hair out of her eyes and said,‘Let’s pretend the punt will take us back to the landing stage of its own accord.’

At once the punt began to move, not very fast, it is true, and certainly not fast enough to explain the curious splashing in its wake. The two girls sat up, still and silent, as it glided on, but the minute theSwallow touched the steps they leaped out. Dossy raced up the sloping grass to the house faster than she had ever run before. John heard her diminishing cries of‘Mummy! Mummy!’ as she disappeared. Milly followed more slowly.

When they had gone, he tied up the punt, climbed wearily up the steps on to the terrace and flung himself on the ground.

23

Milly

For a few minutes John lay panting on the flagstones. They were still warm, although the sun was no longer shining on them. It had been hard work heaving two well-grown girls out of the water, and pushing the punt back to its moorings immediately afterward had taken all his strength. Suddenly he felt a small rasping tongue lick his cheek. It was Calidor. The kitten could see where John lay by the shape of the rapidly growing puddle beneath him.

‘Youmust have got your paws wet!’ said Calidor sympathetically.

‘Hello, Calidor!’ said John, opening his eyes. ‘Have they left you behind?’

Calidor sniffed.

‘One minute they can’t leave me alone, and the next I might be an old punt cushion for all they care about me!’

John sat up.

‘What a stroke of luck!’ he said. ‘Now’s our chance to get away. But talking of punt cushions, I suppose it was all my fault. I think I ought to salvage what I can before we go. I can’t get much wetter.’

Calidor watched with interest the growing chain of wet footmarks– the only sign of John’s progress back to the edge of the lake. He listened to the splash of John’s dive, and then turned his attention to washing his ruffled black coat.

It took John longer than he expected to collect the floating properties of the royal barge. One of the cushions had foundered, and he had to give up his search, but three others, the chair and King Solomon’s turban he left to dry on the terrace. Then he went into the boathouse to look for a towel with which to dry himself as much as possible before starting home. He felt very tired, rather cold in his wet clothes and extremely hungry, but the knowledge that Calidor was as good as recovered made itall worth while. He was in the boathouse giving himself a hard rub down and wondering how on earth they were going to get back to Fallowhithe, when Calidor, who was sitting beside him, suddenly said, ‘Look out! Here’s one of ’em back again!’

It was Milly, wearing one of Dossy’s old frocks. It looked uncomfortably tight.

‘Pussy!’ she called. ‘Puss! puss! puss!’

Calidor backed into a corner of the boathouse, but the movement attracted her attention.

‘Oh, there you are! Come along, pusskin!’

She advanced toward the kitten with her hand held out, and, I am sorry to say, Calidor spat. Milly laughed and knelt down so that he was penned into the corner.

‘It’s no good being cross, because you’re mine now, darling! Dossy says she’s tired of you. Come along. Mr Dawson is waiting to take us home. Everybody is so cross already that I don’t think we’d better keep him waiting!’

She picked up Calidor.

‘Help!’ he mewed. ‘Help, help!’

John’s heart sank. To be on the brink of success only to find the kitten being carried off by another owner!

Milly was leaving the boathouse with the kitten in her arms. There was no time to think of any plan.

‘Milly!’ called John in desperation. ‘Don’t go!’

She turned around in surprise. Standing outside in the bright summer evening she could see nothing but shadows inside the boathouse, so that the fact she could not distinguish the speaker did not surprise her.

‘Who’s there?’ she asked.

‘John, but you wouldn’t know me. I want your help. No, don’t come in. I, I’ve got no clothes on. I’m drying. I’ve just fished all the cushions and the chair out of the lake.’

‘Gosh, thanks awfully!’ said Milly.

‘I’ve hung King Solomon’s turban on the stone seat to dry.’

‘How do you know about King Solomon?’ asked Milly curiously.

‘Because I was in the royal barge as well, when Dossy was being the Queen of Sheba. It was me that pushed off,’ he went on, regardless of grammar. ‘I’m sorry about that. But I did heave you both back into the punt again, and bring it back to the steps.’

Milly opened her eyes very wide.‘Then it wasn’t my pretending come true! Thank goodness! It was horrible thinking that every time I said “Let’s pretend”, it would really happen. You can’t think how bothered I’ve been. But look here, you couldn’t have done it. I should have seen you!’

‘That’s the trouble,’ said John. ‘Now don’t go having hysterics or anything, but I’m invisible.’

‘Not really!’ said Milly with deep interest. She peered into the boathouse, but she could see nobody there. ‘You’re hiding!’ she said at last.

‘No, I’m not!’ said a voice in the empty air beside her.

Milly jumped so violently that she dropped Calidor.

‘You’ll soon get used to the idea,’ said the voice, this time from the other side. ‘It’s the kitten I’ve come for. He really belongs to me and my friend Rosemary. Someone stole him and sold him to a pet shop, and when Dossy bought him I got in the car and came with them. If you don’t believe I’m invisible, look at the kitten. I’m going to pick him up.’

Milly watched enthralled while Calidor rose gently in the air, his furry body hanging limply, as it might over a lifting hand. She rubbed her eyes.

‘It’s no good. I don’t know what’s pretend and what isn’t. Anything could happen this afternoon. I almost think I do believe you. You said you wanted me to help you. What shall I do?’

‘Give me the kitten!’ said John.

‘Is that all!’ said Milly with relief. ‘As a matter of fact I’d be rather glad. When Dossy said would I like him, I quite forgot Mother said she couldn’t put up with one single more pet. The boys and I have so many, and I was wondering what she’d say when I turned up with this one. Besides, you did save us both this afternoon. But look here. Mr Dawson is taking me home in the car. I live at Fiddleworth. Daddy is rector of St Mary’s Church.

‘You will have to come in the car with us and as soon as Mr Dawson has gone I’ll hand the kitten over again.’

They walked back up the sloping lawn, Calidor purring happily and thrusting the top of his small, sleek head against John’s chin.

‘What’s happened to Dossy?’ asked John.

‘Bed,’ said Milly shortly, ‘with hot water bottles and aspirins. She was still moaning when I left.’

‘Were they very angry?’

‘Mrs Dawson was, especially about the new dress. Mr Dawson was wonderful. He laughed, and said we had overdone it a bit this time, but that Dossy needed a bit of shaking up. All the same, I don’t think I shall be asked to play again somehow.’

John was inclined to agree.

24

The Counter-Spell

It must have been about midnight when Rosemary was woken up by someone shaking her shoulder.

‘Wake up, Rosie!’ whispered an urgent voice. ‘Wake up!’

She struggled sleepily out of the ball in which she always curled herself when she went to sleep, and sat up, suddenly wide awake.

‘John, is it you? Have you got Calidor?’

‘I’ve got him right enough,’ said John, and a furry, purring pressure against her side confirmed it.

‘Oh, Calidor, I’m so glad!’

She picked up the kitten and hugged him.‘Now we’ve got you both safely back, and we needn’t worry about you any more!’

‘Well, you can just start worrying about me instead!’ said John, and he made the unmistakable noise of someone trying to suppress a heavy sneeze.

‘I’ve got an awful cold, through going about in soaking clothes. I’ll tell you all about it later. I don’t want to be invisible for one minute longer. We’ve got to work out the counter-spell – now! If I’m going to be ill, how on earth can a doctor sound my chest if he can’t see it?’ he went on gloomily.

Rosemary jumped out of bed with the kitten in her arms.

‘As a matter of fact, I got all the things ready just in case,’ she said as she laid Calidor gently down in the box at the foot of her bed, where Pergamond lay sleeping. ‘I had to do something to keep myself from worrying about you. It’s all under the bed.’

The white shape that was Rosemary’s nightgown went on its knees by the bed and dragged something out from beneath. When John switched on the light, he saw it was a large tin tray. In the centre was one acid drop, an empty eggshell and a candle end. At least that was all that Rosemary could see. John could also see the book of magic and the saucepan that had held the invisible mixture.

‘Good old Rosie!’ said John.

‘I cleaned the saucepan as best I could with wire wool,’ went on Rosemary. ‘You’d better check up on everything from the book because of course I couldn’t read it. I think it would be all right to brew it in the kitchen – Mother’s room is at the other end of the passage. I don’t think she’d hear.’

They crept into the kitchen and put the tray on the table.

Rosemary heard the sound of pages being hastily turned.

‘Here we are! “Counter-spell of Invisibility”,’ he read. ‘Now then,’ he went on in a preoccupied voice, ‘it says, “the moon must be on the wane”. Well, that’s all right, I noticed when I was coming home. And it must be done in the original saucepan. That’s all right, too. Now then, “Put in the saucepan or pipkin seven eggshells full of water, so clear that it doth appear not to be there.” You couldn’t have anything much clearer than Fallowhithe District Council’s tap water, so here goes!’

Rosemary watched while apparently unaided the eggshell filled itself seven times from the tap over the sink, and seven times emptied itself into what she guessed must be the invisible saucepan.

‘“And in it place some transparent substance that by boiling will consume itself,”’ he read. ‘Is that what the acid drop is for?’

‘It’s nearly transparent, and it will melt when the water boils,’ said Rosemary and dropped it in the water.

‘“Then, by the light of a dwindled candle –”’ went on John.

Rosemary stood the candle end in a saucer which she put on the plate rack above the cooker, and lit it with a match.

‘If it goes on dwindling too quickly I shan’t be able to see to read the incantation, so hurry up and light the gas under the saucepan.’

There was a plop as the ring of blue gas jets shot out, and curled around the bottom of the saucepan.

‘Here’s a spoon to stir it with,’ said Rosemary. ‘I looked up “widdershins” in the dictionary and it said it meant counterclockwise.’ She tactfully did not point out that that was what she had said in their unfortunate argument that morning.

John turned off the light, and at once the trim little kitchen was filled with the dark, wavering shadows cast by the candle flame. Already they could see by a ring of bubbles that the water was beginning to boil. Then the acid drop began to leap and bounce on the bottom of the pan. The water boiled furiously, and as it boiled it began to evaporate, and the dancing acid drop grew smaller and smaller and smaller. John watched, fascinated.

‘Go on! Stir, and intone the incantation!’ said Rosemary.

It is not easy to stir a saucepan widdershins and read aloud from cramped, old-fashioned writing by the light of a guttering candle end, but John managed somehow. This is what he intoned:

‘Vapours curdle and congeal,

Shadows thicken and reveal

Solid shapes to see and feel!

Hocus pocus

Into focus,

Invisibility– repeal!’

As he said the word‘repeal’ the spoon twisted itself from his hand and fell with a clatter to the floor; the last drop of moisture dried up in the pan with a sizzle, and by the light of the candle, which suddenly flared up, Rosemary saw a strange sight. She was standing staring where she knew John must be, in front of the cooker, between herself and the kitchen dresser. And as the candle flared up she saw a pale, shadowy form begin to appear. She could see through it the knobs on the dresser drawer and the cups hanging on their hooks, but as she watched, the cups and the knobs grew fainter and fainter and the shape of John more solid. Then the candle went out as suddenly as it had flared up.

‘Put the light on, Rosie!’ said John in a matter-of-fact voice.

She rushed to the switch, and as the prosaic light from the hanging bulb flooded the little kitchen, she saw John standing there, firm, untransparent, hair on end and dirtier than she had ever seen him, but visible.

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‘Am I all right again?’ he asked anxiously.

‘Right as rain!’ said Rosemary beaming from ear to ear, and she seized his nearest hand and shook it up and down like a pump handle to show how pleased she was.

A sudden smell of burning sugar made them look around. The gas was full on under the empty saucepan, which was now visible for anyone to see. So was the book which John had propped up against the kettle behind the lighted ring. Whether the change to visibility had affected its balance, I do not know, but it had fallen forward on its face, with the blue flame of the lighted ring licking at one corner; already the ancient paper, dry as tinder, was well alight.

‘Quick, put it in the sink and turn the tap on it!’ said Rosemary.

John picked up the book and rushed across to the sink, and as he ran, the wind of his going fanned the flames so that they streamed behind him. Twisting red, green and purple flames sent out a shower of many coloured sparks, and though the sparks fell on John’s face and hands, he did not feel them. Rosemary had already run to the sink where she had put in the plug and turned both taps full on. As the book fell in the water with a hiss, a column of jagged purple flame shot up to the ceiling and went out, leaving nothing behind but a little plume of oily, evil-smelling smoke.

‘What queer-looking flames!’ said Rosemary.

‘Well, it was a queer sort of book!’ said John.

The charred remains of the book bobbed sluggishly up and down in the sink. He lifted it out gingerly.

‘The cover isn’t too bad,’ said Rosemary hopefully. ‘But I don’t think anyone will be able to read what is left of the inside.’

‘I’m glad it’s Miss Dibdin who has to take it back to the reference library, and not me!’ said John. ‘I suppose we’d better keep all there is of it.’

They fished out all they could, and drained it as well as they were able in a colander.

‘It can go under my bed till the morning,’ said Rosemary. ‘But John, I do so want to hear all your adventures!’

John stifled a noise that was half a yawn and half a sneeze.‘All I want is to go to bed and sleep and sleep. I’ll tell you about it in the morning. It’s been quite a day!’

25

The Green Mixture

Rosemary woke early next morning. She tiptoed into John’s room and shook him gently but quite firmly.

‘Wake up!’ she said. ‘I’m simply dying to hear about your adventures, and how you rescued Calidor!’

A flushed and tousled John told his story, and Rosemary listened with admiration.‘I got a ride in a lorry back from Fiddleworth,’ he ended. ‘All the same,’ he went on crossly, ‘why couldn’t you let me have my sleep out in peace?’

‘Because if Mother finds you’ve been having your sleep out in peace in your own bed here, when you are supposed to be staying with your Aunt Annabel, there will have to be some pretty awkward explanations!’ said Rosemary, and John had to agree.

They decided that the best plan would be for him to get dressed straight away, go down to the greenhouse and tell Woppit what had happened. Queen Blandamour could then be told as soon as possible that Calidor, too, was safe.

‘You had better hide in the Green Cave until after breakfast, and then come and knock on the front door as though you’ve just arrived,’ said Rosemary.

‘All right,’ said John. ‘It couldn’t be before breakfast, could it?’ he asked wistfully.

‘It couldn’t,’ said Rosemary firmly. ‘That would look very suspicious.’

She left John to his dressing and went to make her mother an early morning cup of tea, because she felt uncomfortable about not telling her what had really happened. Magic was like that, she thought regretfully. Luckily Mrs Brown accepted the fact that Calidor had come back without any awkward questions, and she was delighted to see John again when he politely rang the bell when they were washing the breakfast things.

‘But my dear boy, what a dreadful cold you’ve caught!’ she said when he sneezed violently.

‘I fell id sub water and got awfully wet yesterday. I expect that’s what caused it,’ said John.

She felt his hot forehead.

‘Hm, bed is the best place for you, my dear,’ and to Rosemary’s surprise, he seemed quite glad to go.

When he was tucked up with a hot water bottle, Mrs Brown said,‘Rosie, you had better get some of that special cold cure from Hedgem and Fudge. It’s wonderful stuff. I must get down to the sewing room now. When these Julius Caesar clothes are done I shan’t be so busy. I can’t think how the Romans managed without sewing machines.’

‘I can go and talk to John, can’t I?’ asked Rosemary anxiously. ‘It’s a wet-feet kind of cold, not a catching one.’

Her mother smiled.‘All right, darling. Dinner at half past one. You might peel some potatoes before you go.’

When her mother had gone, Rosemary found John some breakfast. First he had some cornflakes while she cooked him some porridge. Then she boiled him two of the largest, brownest eggs in the larder and he finished off with six pieces of toast and marmalade. While he ate she sat beside him and peeled the potatoes on a tray across her knees. When the last crumb had disappeared, John gave a great satisfied sigh and wiggled his toes under the bedclothes, to the delight of the kittens.

‘Dow I feel better!’ he said, and went on in a snuffly voice, ‘I say, I noticed something last night when I was coming home on the back of the lorry. We had to go through the outskirts of Broomhurst, and the whole place was alive with cats. Even the lorry driver noticed. They were running backward and forward along the walls and collecting in corners and waste spaces. In one place, it was a churchyard I think, there was a whole collection of them, with a great striped brute in front who looked as though he was making a speech.’

‘What was he saying?’ asked Rosemary.

‘I couldn’t hear, which isn’t surprising, because the lorry was carrying a load of lemonade bottles, and we were doing fifty miles an hour at least!’

‘But the Fallowhithe cats –?’

‘They were just trotting about their ordinary business. You know, I wonder if Merbeck is right not to warn them what’s in the wind?’

‘I’ve been wondering that,’ said Rosemary. ‘And what I’ve also been wondering is what is happening about Mrs Flackett’s son, Albert. Do you think he is still shutting himself up in his bedroom, refusing to talk to anybody?’

‘Well, you’d better set off to Hedgem and Fudge as soon as you can and find out.’

‘He may even be back at work again,’ said Rosemary hopefully.

But he was not.

When Rosemary reached the chemist shop, Mr Fudge himself was serving behind the medicine counter. There were several customers before her, so she had to wait a little while to be served.

‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Madam,’ he said to a fat woman who was tapping impatiently on the counter. ‘One of my assistants is away ill, so that I’m shorthanded. I have another coming next week.’

‘Another assistant!’ This meant that Albert was losing his job, and it was all their fault! Rosemary looked across at the perfumery counter where Albert’s young lady worked. She looked as though she had been crying.

With the bottle of cold cure safely in her blazer pocket, Rosemary walked thoughtfully out of the shop. If only they could find the counter-spell for the red mixture he had tasted by mistake! She looked up at the shop window. The great cut glass bottle of crimson liquid glowed like a huge ruby. Then she glanced at the other window. There stood the companion bottle, gleaming green and vivid as a great emerald.

‘Surely it must be the green liquid which undoes the magic of the red,’ thought Rosemary. ‘But what if it doesn’t? What if it does something quite different, like making you sprout two heads or turn into something creepy crawly? I don’t think I’m quite brave enough just to try and see.’

She turned slowly away and walked on down the crowded High Street. She was so deep in thought that she forgot to look where she was going. Suddenly she bumped into someone carrying an overloaded shopping basket. Several packages fell out.

‘Oh, I’m so sorry!’ said Rosemary, and stooped to collect the fallen things.

As she retrieved a rolling tin of baked beans she noticed the shoes of the owner. They were very large and black with big brass buckles. She looked up quickly. Yes, it was Mrs Cantrip.

‘I’m so sorry!’ said Rosemary again, rather faintly.

The old woman looked at her from beneath the headscarf she was wearing. It was scarlet, with a pattern of bold black shapes. To Rosemary’s surprise she looked almost amiable, so with a rush she said, ‘Please, Mrs Cantrip, you remember the prescription you gave us to make us hearing humans?’

‘Oh, ah, I remember!’ The old woman nodded.

‘Well, if you drink the green liquid from the other bottle, will it cancel out the red magic?’

Mrs Cantrip hunched her shoulders and put her head on one side.

‘So you’ve got tired of being a hearing human, have you? Mind, I don’t say as I blame you. All that animal chatter, as well as human! I wouldn’t be in your shoes when that Carbonel comes back and finds his kittens gone! It might be just as well if you couldn’t hear what he says to you.’

Rosemary opened her mouth to say that the kittens were both safe and sound again, but she remembered just in time and said nothing.

‘You’d best get out of it all. I don’t mind telling you there’s more trouble to come! I’ve got a shot in my locker yet!’ And the old woman chuckled.

‘But the green liquid?’ went on Rosemary.

Mrs Cantrip pursed up her mouth till it looked like a buttonhole and drew in her breath as she considered. At last she said,‘All right, I’ll tell you. For why? Because it suits me to, and mind you, magic is the one thing that the likes of me can’t lie about, so you needn’t be afraid. The answer is yes. The green potion is not so tasty perhaps, but it’s good and thorough.’

‘Oh, thank you!’ said Rosemary gratefully.

‘What for?’ said Mrs Cantrip sharply. ‘Not that it wasn’t quick of you to spot it for yourself. I’ve always thought you aren’t so milk and water as you look. That affair with the rocking chair, now, clever that was! I suppose you wouldn’t consider taking up the business seriously yourself ? I’d take you on as an apprentice!’

Rosemary shook her head hard. The offer seemed almost a kind one, so she did not say what she really felt about it.

‘Me, Rosemary Brown, to train as a witch!’ she thought indignantly.

‘Ah, if you’d seen the ranting, roaring, good old days, maybe you’d think differently,’ said the old woman. ‘It’s the loneliness that makes it so hard nowadays, to be the only one left. Why I’ve seen as many fly-by-nights on a midsummer’s evening as there are smuts in the room when the chimney’s been smoking. And the air so full of magic that it fair crackled with it! And I’ve seen ’em all go out, one by one, like bubbles on a bowl of water.’

The old woman’s eyes were dim.

‘But Miss Dibdin –’ began Rosemary.

‘Her?’ said Mrs Cantrip with contempt. ‘She can’t so much as whistle a psalm tune backward! No ear for music. And do you know the only bit of magic she ever pulled off?’

‘What?’ asked Rosemary.

‘A bit of invisibility – child’s play. But what does she have to do when half my furniture’s vanished?’

‘What?’ asked Rosemary again, although she thought she knew the answer.

‘Why, lose the book with the counter-spell in it, so that I was forever tripping over things I couldn’t see. Lucky for her she put it right somehow. It was all there again this morning.’

‘How did she do it?’ asked Rosemary curiously.

‘That’s no concern of yours!’ snapped Mrs Cantrip. Her softened mood had gone. ‘Well, don’t keep me gossiping here!’ she said, and, hitching her shawl more firmly around her thin shoulders, turned and disappeared among the throng of shoppers, with her basket over her arm.

Rosemary turned and ran as fast as she could back to Hedgem and Fudge. As she reached the shop it was just striking one o’clock. Albert Flackett’s young lady was hanging a notice on the door which said ‘Closed’.

‘Oh please, I must speak to you!’ she gasped breathlessly. ‘It’s about Mr Flackett!’

The young lady, whose name was Myrtle Jones, tossed her flaxen head.‘I’m sure I’m not interested in Albert Flackett!’ she said, but the sniff that followed was a sorrowful, not an angry one.

‘But surely you don’t want him to lose his job?’ pleaded Rosemary. ‘And him the only son of his mother. Mrs Flackett’s so proud of him!’

The girl looked at Rosemary shrewdly for a minute as if undecided.

‘Here, come inside,’ she said at last.

The pale green light that filtered through the drawn blinds made it seem a mysterious place. The only things that stood out in the gloom were the two huge bottles that stood on the mahogany partition dividing the window from the shop. The crimson of the red bottle was a little dulled by the green light, but the green liquid glowed clearer and brighter than ever above them.

‘If it’s a message from Albert,’ said Myrtle, ‘you can just tell him from me –’

‘But it’s not a message,’ said Rosemary. ‘He doesn’t know I’ve come. And please, please don’t be angry with him, because it’s all our fault!’

‘Now if this is some more of his nonsense,’ began Myrtle.

‘But it isn’t! Oh, please listen. Now, do you remember the day he was taken ill, he and Mr Fudge took down the big red bottle out of the window?’

‘Yes, yes, I do,’ said the girl. ‘You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw them doing it. I’ve never seen it happen before.’ She sat down on one of the chairs provided for the customers.

‘Well, that was our prescription, and Albert got it all over his hands when he was pouring it out, and then when he was turning over the pages of the catalogue he kept licking his thumb. Don’t you see, that made him ill!’

‘Poor Bertie!’ said Myrtle in a softened voice. ‘But to refuse to see me, after me and him going steady for three years!’

‘But if you’ll only do what I say, he’ll get better, and you can go on going steady.’

‘All right, ducks,’ said Myrtle suddenly. ‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Give him a teaspoonful of the green liquid from the other bottle!’ said Rosemary. ‘I’ll get the ladder, while you fetch something to put the mixture in, and a spoon to get it out.’

‘Well, things can’t be much worse than they are!’ said Myrtle. ‘Here goes!’

She disappeared behind the glass partition where the dispensing was done. When she came back, Rosemary was already at the top of the steps which she had propped against the partition, and the cut glass stopper of the great bottle was in her hand. A vapour rose from the neck of the bottle, and a sweetish smell which made her head swim filled the darkened shop.

‘Please hold the stopper while I fill the little bottle!’ said Rosemary.

Very carefully she scooped some of the liquid up with the spoon, and with a steady hand emptied it into the bottle. She took six spoonfuls to make sure. By the time it was safely corked and in Myrtle’s pocket, the heady smell was making Rosemary giddy. She pulled herself together and replaced the glass stopper in the huge bottle. Then she climbed a little unsteadily down the ladder and went into the dispensary to wash her hands.

‘It’ll be a new assistant instead of me next week as well, if Mr Fudge finds out about this!’ said Myrtle worriedly.

‘He won’t,’ said Rosemary. ‘If you can give Albert a dose this afternoon he can start work again tomorrow! I must run now, I’m going to be terribly late for dinner!’

26

Council of War

When Rosemary reached home, she was just in time to take John’s dinner in to him on a tray.

‘It’s chops and peas and new potatoes!’ she said as she removed the cover.

‘Good!’ said John. ‘Have you got the cold cure?’

Rosemary nodded and told him about Mrs Cantrip and the green mixture. The idea of Rosemary as the old woman’s apprentice he seemed to think very funny.

‘But I’ve got some news for you, too. The attack will be in two days’ time!’

‘How do you know?’

‘Mr Featherstone came in to see me. He’s staying to lunch. He had seen it announced in the local paper. He said that instead of the two towns being ashamed of a disgraceful piece of ribbon development, they were actually going to celebrate its being finished with what the newspaper called a Friendship Ceremony.’

‘What’s ribbon development?’ asked Rosemary.

‘He said it was building a lot of houses along the roadside without proper planning. Anyway, there’s to be music and speechifying, and he said would we all like to come and see it. Then your mother could celebrate finishing the Julius Caesar clothes.’

‘What did Mummy say?’

‘She laughed and said, “What nonsense,” and that she liked making the acting clothes anyway. But she looked pleased, and it’s all settled. We must let Blandamour know as soon as possible.’

‘She’s coming this afternoon,’ said Rosemary. ‘To see the kittens and say thank you to us. I met Woppit as I was coming home. We had better have a council of war up here.’

It was three o’clock before Blandamour arrived. She was followed by Merbeck and Woppit, and to their surprise Tudge came trotting behind at a respectful distance. He had called to see his sister.

Rosemary had brushed the protesting kittens until their coats gleamed. Calidor’s white socks were spotless. Every whisker was in order. They both sat on John’s bed rehearsing the Kitten’s Welcome to His Parents which all well-bred animals use. It begins:

Accept my warm, respectful purr,

Clean, my paws, and trim, my fur.

But when their mother walked through the open door they got no further than‘Accept my warm…’ before they scrambled off the bed and ran helter-skelter to her. They rubbed themselves against her snow-white sides, mingling their shrill, quick purrs with her deeper, steadier hum.

‘My children! My little children!’ said Blandamour as she licked their upturned faces. Both Calidor and Pergamond were telling their adventures at the same time, in shrill, excited voices. ‘Hush! hush, my dears. Later,’ said their mother and turned to John and Rosemary.

‘I have no words with which to thank you for all you have done!’ she began.

‘That’s all right, Your Majesty,’ said John awkwardly. ‘Don’t bother. Besides, we haven’t really got time. The attack will be in two days. We’ve just heard!’

While he told her what he knew, Blandamour leapt on to the bed, closely followed by her Councillor. The kittens scrambled up the bedspread and began jostling for the place nearest their mother, until she silenced them with a scoop of her paw. There was a scuffle as Tudge tried to leap up, too. Woppit’s voice could be heard coming from under the bed, making such remarks as ‘Like your impudence!’ and ‘The likes of us.’ At last they all listened to John in silence. He told them of the activity among the Broomhurst cats that he had seen from the back of the lorry, and the conversation heand Rosemary had overheard near Adelaide Row. At last Merbeck spoke.

‘Some of this we knew already. What we did not know was when the last little gap in the wall would be finished and the Cat Causeway completed. That is the news we have been waiting for. Now, we can act!’

‘Two days doesn’t seem very long to get ready when the others have been stirring up their followers for weeks!’ said Rosemary anxiously.

‘Do not worry. We have not been idle,’ said Blandamour. ‘Contented, well-governed cats do not need to be brought to heel with bribery and fiery speeches.’

‘We have two advantages,’ said Merbeck. ‘First, Grisana does not know that we are warned and well-prepared; secondly, they will have only one road of approach, the newly finished garden walls of Broomhurst Road.’

‘But how do you know that they won’t come pouring across the fields on either side?’ said Rosemary.

Merbeck turned his grizzled face toward her.‘Because if cats begin fighting on human ground, then humans will join in, and when that happens, in their blundering way they set about every cat in sight, with brooms and buckets of water and even hose pipes. I’ve seen it happen. How are they to know which cats are which?’

Tudge’s voice from under the bed was heard to mutter, ‘Daft creatures, humans!’ to be hastily shushed by Woppit.

‘Cat troubles must be decided in cat country, and beyond a scuffle or two the humans will know nothing about it,’ went on Merbeck. ‘Now, as I see it, the enemy, not knowing that we shall be alert and watching every movement, at a given signal will pour into Fallowhithe.’

‘And you will fall silently on them as they arrive along the causeway and finish ’em off!’ said John bouncing up and down in bed. ‘Easy!’

‘Not so easy!’ went on Merbeck. ‘Already many enemy cats have slipped into the town – lawless, insolent creatures, urged on by their wicked Queen. Provided that they still think themselves unnoticed, it seems to us that there will be some prearranged meeting place where they will plan to meet the newcomers. The main body of animals, who will come pouring along the Causeway, must at all costs be stopped from joining the others at this meeting place. Where that will be it is for us to find out.’

The hair on the ridge of the old cat’s back was bristling, and his tail was lashing fiercely from side to side.

‘Will you have enough cats to turn them back?’ asked Rosemary anxiously.

‘We are a highly organized society, my dear young lady!’ said Merbeck. ‘Every road, square and terrace has its cat guardian. They have had their instructions for some days. Every ten houses has at least six able-bodied animals who would fight to the last claw, cat and kitten, for their Queen,and their families. “The choice of the best hearthrugs for Broomhurst animals” indeed!’

‘But what about Mrs Cantrip and Miss Dibdin?’ asked Rosemary. ‘Aren’t you forgetting them?’

‘I don’t think we need bother about Miss Dibdin,’ said John. ‘She wasn’t much good anyway, but without her book of spells she can’t even try to do anything. As for Mrs Cantrip, you said yourself, Rosie, that she had practically nothing left in her magic cupboard.’

‘There were only two things left, a little bit of Flying Philtre in a tine, but Miss Dibdin said she had finished that on the broom, and a pinch of brownish powder in a pickle jar, but I can’t remember what it said on the label, M-i-n… something.’

‘Well, whatever it was, I shouldn’t think she could do much damage with a few grains.’

Rosemary frowned.‘I wonder what she meant when she said she’d still got a shot in her locker then? She kept her word to Grisana about the kittens, and she may still try to “kidnap” Queen Blandamour.’

‘You talk as though I am as feeble as a kitten with its eyes closed!’ said Blandamour. ‘I can defend myself!’ she added proudly.

‘I hope that will not be necessary,’ said Merbeck. ‘From now on you shall be guarded night and day!’

‘Don’t you think –’ began Rosemary uneasily.

‘I think you’re fussing!’ said John.

‘I will be careful,’ said Blandamour, ‘I promise you that.’

‘And speaking of the royal kittens!’ went on Merbeck thoughtfully, ‘it seems to me that while they are here they may still be in danger. Would it not be better to hide them?’

‘But where?’

Promptly from under the bed came the voice of Tudge.‘At Turley’s Farm for sure! Oh, leave me be, Woppit, you old busybody!’ he added in a hoarse whisper.

‘Come here, my faithful Tudge!’ said Blandamour.

Tudge heaved his ungainly form on to the bed, ducked awkwardly but respectfully at the white cat and said,‘If you’ll pardon the liberty, not never before having even passed the time of day with royalty, but willing to serve you, ma’am, and them royal kits to the last whisker.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Now I was thinking, at Turley’s cats and kittens is as common as pebbles on a gravel path, and if so be I was to say my sister Woppit was come from the town with her two kitlings for a holiday, nobody wouldn’t think twice about it, if so be Your Majesty wouldn’t take it as a liberty…’ his voice trailed off.

‘My good Tudge, it is an excellent idea. With you and Woppit to guard them, I am sure they will come to no harm.’

‘But I want to defend Father’s kingdom, too!’ complained Calidor. ‘I’d give it ’em!’ He pounced violently on John’s toes which John had moved unwarily under the bedclothes. Pergamond did not seem pleased at this arrangement either.

‘Nasty, common, country cats!’ she complained with a toss of her tortoise-shell head.

Blandamour for once looked really angry and she gave her a cuff that sent her rolling. But the farm cat did not seem offended.

‘Common and country maybe, little royal ma’am, but nasty, no! Now come along with old Tudge, and perhaps he’ll tell you about some of the adventures he had when he were at sea aboard theMary Jane.’

Calidor struggled down the trailing bedspread on to the floor.‘Were you at sea?’ he said.

‘Ship’s cat, I were,’ said Tudge. ‘Together with my mate Wyb. High old times we had, what with the flying fish.’

‘Flying fish?’ said Pergamond, and scrambled down, too.

‘Ah, my pretty, like sardines with wings, but not so tasty. Now, there was one night when a storm blew up…’

The two kittens trotted off, one on either side of Tudge, listening eagerly. Before he went through the door, he turned and winked broadly.

Woppit tossed her head and bowed at the same time, hoping that this would show both respect for Queen Blandamour and disapproval of her brother’s low manners. Then she followed the kittens.

‘I suppose we couldn’t help when the attack comes?’ asked John.

Blandamour shook her head.‘That would be very unwise. Grisana cheated by enrolling the help of Mrs Cantrip. You have done for us what we could never have done alone. If they must quarrel, cats against cats and humans against humans, that is the order of things.’

‘If we can arrange for you to be present we will send a message,’ said Merbeck. ‘But now we must go. There is so much to do!’

27

The Friendship Ceremony

Mrs Brown kept John in bed all the next day, but before breakfast on Friday, Rosemary went to fetch the milk. She ran quickly downstairs, and as she picked up the two bottles the milkman had left for Mrs Brown, a young cat with a glossy black coat and a white face trotted briskly up to her.

‘Name of Rosemary?’ he asked.

‘Yes, that’s me.’

‘Message for you from Councillor Merbeck,’ he said importantly. Then he looked around cautiously and lowered his voice. ‘The attack is planned for midnight tonight. Be at the Green Cave at half past eleven.’

‘Yes, but…’ began Rosemary.

‘Can’t stop, too much to do!’ said the black cat and hurried away.

‘Good oh!’ said John when she told him. He was dressed and making the toast for breakfast in front of the gas fire in the sitting room. ‘I hoped they wouldn’t forget us. I do want to be in on the attack.’

‘I don’t think I want to be there much,’ said Rosemary. ‘But on the other hand I should be miserable at home not knowing what was happening.’

‘Anyway, we’ve got this Friendship affair this afternoon,’ said John.

It was due to begin at half past two. At two o’clock, after a very merry lunch, for Mr Featherstone had joined them again, John carried down the picnic basket. They were going to make an outing of it.

‘Why, Mummy!’ said Rosemary, as her mother got into Mr Featherstone’s ancient car, ‘what a lovely new dress!’

‘I think you look gorgeous!’ said John.

‘I couldn’t put it better myself,’ said Mr Featherstone gravely. ‘Gorgeous is the word!’

Mrs Brown went quite pink, but she laughed and said she was sure it was time they started.

When they reached the new houses of Broomhurst Road, there was no doubt where the ceremony was to be held. A long row of cars was parked on either side, and a loud speaker van was playing‘Land of Hope and Glory’. The completed houses stretched in an unbroken line. Nearly all of them had curtains at the windows, and the corner where John had hidden from Mrs Cantrip behind the half-built wall already housed a washing machine.

A crowd had collected round the one unfinished part, a short stretch of garden wall. Behind it stood the Mayors of Broomhurst and Fallowhithe in their mayoral robes, supported by a number of important local people. When the loud speaker had finished playing, the Mayor of Fallowhithe made a long speech about what an historic occasion it was for both towns and one which he hoped would bind them more firmly together in a bond of friendship and healthy rivalry. Then the Mayor of Broomhurst replied in much the same way. The speeches were rather long, and John, whose attention was wandering, suddenly nudged Rosemary.

‘Look! Over there in the front row!’

It was Mrs Cantrip. She was listening very solemnly and clapping from time to time rather more loudly than was necessary. At last the speeches were over and the Mayor of each town took a trowel and some mortar, and amidst some laughter, laid two bricks side by side in token of the cementing of the friendship between Broomhurst and Fallowhithe, and Mrs Cantrip clapped so loudly that people turned and stared.

‘Who is that extraordinary old woman?’ asked Mr Featherstone. Both John and Rosemary thought it better not to tell him. Then the Mayors shook hands and the loud speaker van played ‘Jerusalem’, followed by ‘God Save the Queen’, and the crowds began to move away.

‘There’s nothing more to wait for,’ said Mrs Brown.

‘Let’s wait a bit longer,’ said Rosemary, who felt unwilling to go.

‘There’s nothing more to see,’ said Mr Featherstone, ‘except the man who is finishing the wall.’

A bricklayer was skilfully and rapidly filling up the rest of the gap. Rosemary thought it was the same man to whom they had talked on the day they had found the rocking chair. Thinking of the rocking chair reminded her of Mrs Cantrip. She looked around, but the old woman was gone.

‘Just look at those two cats!’ said Mrs Brown.

They were sitting behind the workman, apparently half asleep, their eyes nearly closed. But there was an alertness about them that did not deceive Rosemary.

‘They look like Noggin and Swabber, those two cats we met on the high place!’ she whispered to John.

‘Will you finish the wall today?’ asked Mrs Brown.

‘Bless you, yes!’ said the man, skilfully scraping off a piece of unwanted mortar and slapping it into position.

The cats were wide awake now. They were staring at the bricklayer with unblinking eyes.

‘By five o’clock this afternoon it’ll all be done, and smooth on the top as your Ma’s tape measure!’ he said to Rosemary, and at the word ‘five’, Noggin and Swabber were off down the road to Broomhurst like greased lightning, as John put it.

‘And talking of lightning, I think there’s thunder about,’ said Mr Featherstone.

It was certainly very close.‘I vote we have tea in Bagshott Wood. It may be cooler there.’

The tea was delicious, with ice cream and some late raspberries brought by Mr Featherstone as his share of the feast. Afterwards, John and Rosemary lay on their backs in the dry beech leaves, and looked up at the shifting chinks of sky between the branches above them. They had so much to think about that they were rather quiet. The grownups talked earnestly together, but the children lay there listening to the animal conversations going on around them.

A bird sang a song somewhere about the joys of bringing up a family. The song had a chorus of trills and tralas, and the last verse went on to say that perhaps the joy of being free again when the family had flown away was even better. Two spiders were arguing about the best way to start a web between two trees. A rabbit looked around a stump and said in disgust,‘More humans!’ and disappeared again.

Mrs Brown and Mr Featherstone went off for a walk, and as the flowered dress and the grey flannels disappeared between the trees, Rosemary said,‘You know, the best part of all this magic has been the power to hear animals talk. I don’t think I could bear to have it taken away now!’

‘Nor me,’ said John, not bothering about his grammar. ‘You know, I think waiting is the hardest thing of all to do. I don’t think half past eleven tonight will ever come!’

28

The Attack

In spite of their doubt, half past eleven did come at last. Mrs Brown had gone to bed early.

‘That long walk with Mr Featherstone this afternoon must have made her tired,’ whispered John as they crept downstairs with their sandals in their hands. This time they were taking no chances and were fully dressed.

It was hot and very still in the darkened garden. In the Green Cave, not a leaf stirred above them. They took it in turns to sit on the biscuit tin to put on their sandals. Presently a darker shadow slipped between the bushes, and the brisk voice of the cat who had delivered the message that morning said,‘Greetings to you, sir and miss!’

‘Greetings to you!’ said Rosemary politely.

‘I have been instructed to see you safely to headquarters, and I assure you, you will be perfectly safe in my charge.’

‘That’s very good of you,’ said John, who felt quite capable of looking after himself and Rosemary. ‘But all the same –’

‘Not at all!’ broke in the animal, as they crawled out of the Green Cave. ‘Not that it is for everybody I’d risk missing my place in the battle, no sir! But your fame has gone far and wide, as the gallant rescuers of the royal kittens, and I’d look on it as an honour,’ he said graciously. ‘Leadbitter is the name.’

They followed him out of the garden into the road.

‘Where are the headquarters?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Ssh!’ said Leadbitter hurriedly. ‘The very lampposts may have ears!’ he whispered. ‘Follow me!’

John and Rosemary followed. Leadbitter trotted on in the swift, effortless way of the cat with a purpose, and they had their work cut out to keep up with him. An occasional car sped by, and sometimes a late homecomer walked quickly past, and looked curiously at the two children. Several times they were overtaken by other cats hurrying in the same direction. To each one Leadbitter called softly,‘Bittem?’ and the animal would answer, ‘Haddock heads!’ And apparently satisfied, Leadbitter would trot on again. Once they saw a large tabby cat accompanied by a very small one. ‘This is not a night for kittens to be abroad, ma’am!’ said Leadbitter firmly. ‘Better take him indoors as quickly as possible!’

‘Yes, sir, this very minute, sir. I’m taking him out of harm’s way to his auntie, sir!’ came the answer.

They hurried on, and as they neared the Old Town, John said,‘Rosie, look at that wall!’

The pavement along which they were hurrying ran beside a wall which towered like a cliff above them. Rosemary looked up and saw along the top a steady stream of animals, trotting silently, purposefully along. Leadbitter turned to see why they had stopped, and looked up, too.

‘Ours,’ he said briefly. ‘Come on!’

When at last they turned the corner at the end of the street, they found themselves by a churchyard.

‘St Michael’s!’ said Rosemary.

‘It’s a ruin, isn’t it?’ asked John.

Rosemary nodded.

‘Only since the war. The tower is complete, though. People pay sixpence to go up and see the view from the top through the telescope. Is that where the headquarters are?’ she asked. ‘But how can we get inside? The keeper locks it every night.’

‘Well, tonight isn’t the first time he’s forgotten!’ said Leadbitter, and trotted across the road and up to the iron studded door. ‘Go on! Open it! We have other means of getting to the top, but you will have to use the stairs.’

John turned the handle. The door opened easily. It was dark inside the tower, but as their eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, they saw a winding stair up which they followed their guide, who was, of course, able to see perfectly well. As they stumbled up behind him, they passed three narrow windows, by which they paused to regain their breath. Through the first they saw they were level with the second floor windows of the houses opposite. Through the second window they were level with the roof tops. But when they plodded rather breathlessly past the third window, they could see nothing but the deep blue of the night sky. At last they reached the belfry where the three church bells hung, silent, above them. Rosemary put up her arm as something swooped and fluttered around their heads. It was a bat.

‘A disgraceful intrusion!’ it complained in a high, peevish voice. ‘Bats in the belfry I always understood it was, not dozens of cats, and now two great lumbering humans as well!’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Rosemary. ‘We didn’t mean to disturb you, and we will try not to lumber.’

‘Hearing humans, eh?’ twittered the bat. ‘Well, I suppose that’s different,’ and he darted through the open trap door above them.

Leadbitter, followed by John and Rosemary, climbed up the wooden ladder that led to the square of star-studded sky. He paused as a cat’s head was outlined against the stars, and a pair of green eyes looked down on them. ‘Halt, and give the password!’ said the head.

‘Haddock heads!’ said Leadbitter. ‘I’ve brought the sir and miss.’

‘The Councillor is waiting for you. Look lively and come up.’

They came out into the night air. Many times Rosemary had paid her sixpence and climbed the tall church tower to look through the telescope which stood at the top. You could see the roofs of Fallowhithe spread beneath. Away in the distance to the south, across the fields, you could see the smudge of houses that was Broomhurst. But that, of course, was in daylight. With John she came out, not on to the leaded roof she had expected, but on to an uneven rocky hollow, surrounded, not by the carved pinnacles of the church tower, but by strangely formed jagged rocks. There was no telescope. Where Rosemary thought it stood was a little, stunted tree. But they had no time to examine anything as Merbeck trotted up.

‘My dear John and Rosemary, you are just in time! From here you will be able to watch the progress of the attack in safety. What are you fidgeting for, Leadbitter? Yes, yes, of course you may go now!’

Leadbitter gave a quick bow to Rosemary.

‘Good luck, my boy!’ called Merbeck. ‘For Queen and country! I only wish I were ten years younger!’ But Leadbitter had already disappeared.

‘But where is Queen Blandamour?’ asked John.

‘She insisted on addressing our faithful Fallowhithe animals before the attack.’

‘Like Queen Elizabeth the First at Tilbury before the Spanish Armada,’ whispered Rosemary.

‘She is surrounded by a powerful bodyguard, and already she should be on her way back here. But come and see.’

He led them to the rocky parapet where several cats, who were gazing down, made room for them. From their dizzy pinnacle of rock they could see Fallowhithe spread out beneath, but just as the roof of the high place had seemed not a roof but a grassy plateau, so it seemed in the clear starlit night that they were looking down, not on the roofs and chimneys of a town, but on a mountainous, craggy country, scored with valleys and canyons. It stretched away to the north till it was lost in the darkness. To the south, a low range of hills narrowed to what looked like a spur of land, which dwindled in its turn into a ribbon which pointed straight as a ruler into the darkness where they knew Broomhurst must be.

‘Is that the Causeway?’ asked John.

Merbeck nodded.

There was a low mist over the fields on either side which might well have been the sea.

‘It all looks so peaceful!’ said Rosemary.

‘Maybe,’ said Merbeck. ‘But wait until the clocks strike midnight! My spies discovered that that is when the attack is planned. Do you remember the old skating rink?’

Rosemary nodded. She remembered the rink as a low building enclosed by a jumble of tall shops and offices. The Councillor waved with his paw toward a low lying hollow surrounded by rocky hills.

‘That is one of the places where the Broomhurst cats plan to gather, when they have crept in secretly by the Causeway, and there they expect to be joined by their friends who have already wormed their way into the town. There is a second meeting place to the north on Fire Station Heights.’

‘But I can’t see any cats!’ said John.

‘There is nothing so still as a cat that does not wish to be seen,’ said Merbeck. ‘Wait!’

As he spoke, behind them the Cathedral clock struck twelve, with its deep, booming voice, to be joined by the quick eager chimes of the clock of the Market Hall. Hard on its heels came the station clock, and like distant echoes sounded the clocks of St Anne’s Church and Fallowhithe High School. When there was nothing left of the chimes but a faint vibration in the air, Merbeck said, ‘Now look at Skating Rink Hollow!’

‘Something’s moving!’ said John.

‘The enemy!’ said Merbeck.

It was as though the surface of the hollow was a giant cauldron, and someone was stirring it with a huge wooden spoon. Little eddies of cats ran up the surrounding slopes and joined the ones already there.

‘Hm,’ said Merbeck, ‘there were more of them already here than I imagined.’

He turned toward the Causeway. It was as though in the dark, out of sight, a bottle of ink had been spilled along its width, and had seeped along the top toward Fallowhithe.

‘Broomhurst cats,’ said Merbeck briefly.

‘Two hundred strong they must be!’ said one of the animals standing at Merbeck’s side.

‘Oh dear, can’t we do something?’ said Rosemary anxiously. ‘Before it’s too late!’

‘Have patience. Remember they do not know we have been warned!’ said Merbeck.

The Causeway cats had nearly reached the walls, or hills, of Fallowhithe.‘Give the signal,’ he said sharply. ‘Now!’

The cat beside him threw back his head and gave a low bubbling cry which rose in the air, growing shrill and clear till it split the silence like a bugle call. Far away came an answering cry, then from different parts of the town, another and another.

‘You see we are not unprepared! That was the signal for the defenders to advance!’ said Merbeck. ‘Now watch. Their orders are to stop the animals on the Causeway from joining their friends on Skating Rink Hollow and Fire Station Heights, both of which are surrounded by picked Fallowhithe cats.’

Something was happening on the Causeway. At the sound of the bugle call the oncoming army of Broomhurst cats halted, then they moved on again more slowly. They kept closely together, but finding themselves unhindered, quickened their pace until they reached the slopes that were the first roof tops of Fallowhithe, and as they spread out and moved up the incline, the slope on the other side seemed to come alive and move up to meet them. It was the Fallowhithe cats who had been waiting, so still and silent that they had seemed part of the landscape itself. With bloodcurdling cries they surged up to the top and hurled themselves on the enemy, spitting their defiance.

From the lookout John and Rosemary could see the struggling mass swaying first one way and then another.

‘But we can’t tell what’s happening!’ said Rosemary in distress.

‘I think all is going well!’ said Merbeck. ‘We shall know more when the dispatches start coming in. I wish Her Majesty were here to watch. It is high time she returned,’ he said uneasily.

But John and Rosemary were looking towards Skating Rink Hollow. This was farther away, so that they could not see so clearly what was going on. But whereas it had looked like a cauldron stirred with a spoon when the enemy cats first began to move, it now looked as though the cauldron was boiling furiously, as more and more Fallowhithe animals hurled themselves into the hollow. From time to time a rallying cry would break the silence of the night with its shrill eerie note, while small skirmishes broke out all over the town as the Broomhurst animals scattered, spitting and swearing.

The clocks chimed the quarter, and the half hour, and a messenger cat came panting up to Merbeck.

‘The Causeway fight is going well, sir. A number of the enemy have turned tail!’

‘The Fire Station Heights affair is satisfactory, sir!’ said another cat breathlessly. ‘But there is trouble at Skating Rink Hollow. We’re outnumbered!’

‘Bring up some of the reserves,’ snapped Merbeck. ‘Better use the Garbage Foragers – scum of the town, but magnificent fighters!’ he added for John’s benefit. ‘Why does not Her Majesty come?’

‘Councillor! Sir!’ said a voice. ‘It’s Leadbitter! He’s wounded.’

They turned. Leadbitter stood panting behind them. One ear was torn, and there was a gash in his side.

‘Terrible news!’ he said. ‘The Queen! She’s gone!’

29

Minuscule Magic

‘The Queen gone?’ repeated Merbeck. ‘When? How did it happen?’

‘She was returning after her speech. Things were getting pretty hot, and the Captain of the Queen’s Guard enrolled a few cats who were passing – in case of trouble – and I was one. Well, we were in a solid ring around her, nose to tail, and one minute she was there… and the next… she was nowhere to be seen!’

‘Does anyone else know this besides the bodyguard?’ asked Merbeck anxiously.

‘I’m afraid they do. The Captain called to every cat in Fairfax Market to search.’

‘Fairfax Market!’ said John and Rosemary together.

‘Can you tell us exactly where it happened?’ asked John.

‘We were in Cat Country. We’d jumped down to the pavement to avoid a skirmish between half a dozen animals, and we were keeping well into the wall, when a window opened just above. A human looked out and laughed, not a nice noise it wasn’t, and then… the Queen was gone!’

‘Her white coat must have shown up as clearly as spilt milk,’ said Merbeck.

‘Quick,’ said John. ‘Can you remember anything about the house you were near?’

‘Not much,’ said Leadbitter. ‘I was too busy. Hold on though! There was a door that opened and closed very quickly while we were searching. I looked around when I heard a bang, and it was scarlet half way down.’

‘Mrs Cantrip!’ said Rosemary.

John nodded grimly.

Another messenger came up.

‘Sir Councillor, things are going against us! A fresh wave of the enemy has stormed the Causeway, and Fallowhithe cats are falling back. They’ve heard the Queen has disappeared, and it’s shaken ’em badly!’

‘Come on, Rosie!’ said John. ‘It looks as though we may be able to help after all.’ He turned to Merbeck. ‘If Mrs Cantrip has got her, we’ll get her back, somehow!’

‘Of course we will!’ said Rosemary stoutly. ‘Come on, John!’

‘Hurry!’ said Merbeck. ‘There is no time to lose!’

Together they scrambled down the rocky chasm, which they knew led to the belfry. Once their feet were on the wooden ladder the shadowy cat world disappeared, and although they neither of them stopped to say so, it was a relief to feel the solid firmness of the winding stairs, even though they had to feel their way down in the dark. The bank of cloud had mounted higher in the sky, and as they ran through the churchyard, there was a low rumble of distant thunder. They did not stop to look up at the swaying battle on the roofs of the houses opposite, but ran as fast as they could to Fairfax Market. Without stopping to think what they would do next, they hammered on the scarlet front door of Mrs Cantrip’s house.

It opened quickly.

‘It’s you, is it? I thought as much, for all your talk of backing out,’ said the old woman accusingly to Rosemary.

Rosemary had no time to point out that she had never talked about it at all, before John demanded fiercely.‘Queen Blandamour! Where is she? You’ve got her hidden somewhere!’

‘If you’re so certain, you’d best come in and see for yourselves!’ said Mrs Cantrip, with a mocking curtsy.

They followed the old woman through the bare room inside the front door, which had nowhere to hide a fly, let alone a well-grown, white cat, and into the little kitchen beyond.

‘Where is she?’ repeated John.

Mrs Cantrip sat herself down in the rocking chair and began to rock herself to and fro.

‘If seeing’s believing, and you can’t see her, well, it proves she isn’t here, young man. So look as much as you’ve a mind to. Then perhaps you’ll leave a law-abiding old woman to her night’s rest.’

John and Rosemary stood in the middle of the floor. By the flickering light of a candle in a bottle they looked around. It was very quiet in the little room. There was no sound except the rhythmical rocking of the chair on the tiled floor. An occasional scuffle outside was the only sign of the battle that was raging above them. There was nothing behind the cloak that hung on a peg on the door. Their hopes were raised by a tall thin cupboard by the fireplace, but when they looked inside there was nothing but Miss Dibdin’s flying besom, and an ordinary sweeping broom very upright in a corner, as though it did not much care for the other’s company. Mrs Cantrip chuckled at their disappointment.

On the table in the middle of the room were the remains of a meal. It was laid for two. John noticed that one plate and the cup and saucer beside it were empty, but the other had some cold meat and pickles on it, and only half of the cup of tea had been drunk, as though someone had left the table in a hurry.

‘Where is Miss Dibdin?’ asked Rosemary.

‘How should I know?’ said Mrs Cantrip, with her head on one side. ‘With your precious white cat, for all I know.’

‘Go and look upstairs, Rosie!’ said John.

Rosemary went, and while she was gone, Mrs Cantrip went on rocking and looking at John with a twisted smile. He began to wonder if they had made a mistake after all. Rosemary came down again and reported that there was no sign of Miss Dibdin and no trace of Blandamour. She had looked in every drawer and cupboard and corner.

‘I’ve had enough of your busybodying,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘I’m going to sleep.’

She took a large handkerchief out of her pocket, spread it over her face and linked her hands over her waist. But the vigorous rocking of the chair suggested someone very wide awake indeed.

‘If only we could see better. It’s so dark!’ said John.

‘I believe she keeps her candles in here,’ said Rosemary, and she went to the little hanging cupboard behind the door.

‘Top shelf, left-hand side,’ said Mrs Cantrip from under the handkerchief. John and Rosemary looked at each other in a puzzled way. They had never known Mrs Cantrip to be obliging before, and the very strangeness of it made them suspicious.

‘Light as many of ’em as you like,’ said the old woman. Rosemary took down three candles.

‘There’s a box of matches here,’ she said and picked it up from the bottom shelf. But Mrs Cantrip whipped the handkerchief from her face and said fiercely, ‘Don’t you touch it! Put it down!’

Now you will have noticed that everyone who picks up a box of matches gives it a little shake to see if there are any matches inside. Rosemary obediently put the box down, but she noticed that although it was not light enough to be empty, it did not make the little rattle that matches usually do. It had been lying on the bottom shelf of the cupboard where she remembered Mrs Cantrip had kept the few little bits of magic she had left. Only the glass pickle jar was there, but now it was empty, too. The label on it said MINUSCULE MAGIC.

‘Minuscule!’ said John. ‘I’ve seen that word somewhere, I wish I could think –’

‘I shouldn’t bother, dear!’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘You light the pretty candles from the one in the bottle. It’s a pity to waste good matches!’ She was smiling once more.

John lit the candles and stuck them in a row on the mantelpiece, and as he lit the third one he suddenly said,‘I’ve got it! We were playing that spelling game, and Daddy used it, and we all said there wasn’t such a word as minuscule, and Daddy said there was and it meant very, very tiny!’

Mrs Cantrip jumped up from her chair so violently that she knocked it over backwards. For a few seconds one could have heard a pin drop, and then from behind Rosemary, who was still standing in front of the open cupboard, came a faint, faint scrabbling noise together with a tiny shrill‘meow’. At first she thought it was a mouse, but, as everybody knows, mice don’t mew.

‘The matchbox!’ she said.

Mrs Cantrip strode across the room, but Rosemary was too quick for her. She picked it up and gently slid it open. Fitting neatly, curled up inside, was a tiny, tiny white cat!

‘It’s Blandamour! You’ve made her small with the Minuscule Magic!’ said Rosemary.

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30

The Return of the Kings

John and Rosemary peered at the minute white cat.

‘Oh, Blandamour, I’m so thankful we’ve found you!’ whispered Rosemary.

The tiny creature rubbed against her outstretched forefinger, and purred with a sound no louder than the ticking of the smallest watch.

‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’ asked Mrs Cantrip defiantly. ‘Say to them Fallowhithe animals, “Here’s your Queen back again. I’m sorry she’s no bigger than a ginger biscuit?” Do you think they’ll believe you? Well you needn’t bother, I shouldn’t think it matters much by now. Not that I care two pennyworth of pentagons who wins, the Fallowhithe cats or the Broomhurst ones. And it’s no use asking for the counter-spell,’ she went on fiercely. ‘I’ve done enough obliging of you for one night and I’m doing no more. Three candle ends I’ve given you, and that’s generous.’

‘Perhaps Miss Dibdin would help us,’ suggested Rosemary.

‘Yes, where is she?’ asked John, looking at the unfinished meal on the table.

‘Where she won’t be no help to you!’ snapped Mrs Cantrip.

‘What have you done to her?’ asked John sharply.

‘She shouldn’t have been so aggravating,’ said the old woman sullenly. ‘Serves her right!’

‘Miss Dibdin, where are you?’ called Rosemary anxiously.

As if in answer a small round object rolled off the top shelf of the cupboard behind her and fell with a plop on to the floor. It was a nutmeg. They looked at the top shelf, and struggling to push its way between a bag of sugar and a packet of rice was a tiny, doll-like figure, in a neat tweed jacket and skirt.

‘Miss Dibdin!’ said John.

‘How could you?’ said Rosemary accusingly to Mrs Cantrip.

The old woman tossed her head, but she seemed anxious not to look Rosemary in the eye.

‘Well, I had to keep her out of mischief somehow,’ she said sullenly. ‘I couldn’t have her messing up my last crumb of magic with her silly ways.’

‘When did you do it?’ asked John.

‘It suddenly came over me in the middle of supper, so I blew a grain or two of Minuscule Magic on her just as she helped herself to pickles, and popped her in the cupboard in a potted meat jar to keep her safe. I can’t think how she got out. You can have her if you want to, she’s no use to me. And the cat, too, for that matter. The battle is over by now, I shouldn’t wonder.’

‘The battle!’ said Rosemary. ‘I’d almost forgotten all about it.’

As if to remind them, there was a prolonged scuffle outside and far away a sharp cat call.

‘Come on, Rosie, let’s get back to headquarters. I’ll put Miss Dibdin in my pocket, and you take Blandamour.’

Very gently he picked up Miss Dibdin between his finger and thumb. She had been sitting in a dazed way on a pepper pot. He popped her back into the potted meat jar and put it in the top pocket of his blazer. Rosemary picked up the matchbox, and when the tiny cat had curled herself up inside, closed it softly. Together they hurried out into Fairfax Market. There they looked up anxiously at the roofs above them, expecting to see the struggling shapes that had swayed and fought there when they had made their way to Mrs Cantrip’s house. But there seemed nothing to be seen but deserted walls and roofs, and the sounds of battle sounded faint and far away. A solitary cat limped past them.

‘What’s happening?’ asked Rosemary. ‘Has the Fallowhithe army won?’

‘Won!’ said the cat bitterly. ‘It won’t be long now before the Broomhurst creatures are in full control. They have swept over half the town. Already this is enemy-held territory. There are pockets of our animals here and there, harrying where they get the chance, but our fellows are retreating to the other end of the town.’

‘Oh dear!’ said Rosemary.

‘Are the headquarters on the church tower still?’ asked John.

‘Bless you, no! The last time I saw Councillor Merbeck, he was defending Swimming Bath Slopes. He’d been joined by a company of fierce farm cats – terrible fighters they are. They call themselves Turley’s Terrors. But I can’t stop gossiping here. I’m carrying dispatches.’

‘Come on, Rosie, let’s make for the swimming bath. Follow me!’ said John. ‘I think I know the way.’

‘Good luck to you, hearing humans!’ the cat called after them.

They ran up Green Man Lane, down Pottery Court, across the High Street where the traffic lights winked busily to an empty road. Then, cutting down Ponsonby Street, they turned into Bath Road. At first they came across an occasional tussling pair of cats above them, and then groups and companies, until, when they reached the swimming baths, the roof was a solid mass of struggling animals. A haze of flying fur made it difficult to see what was happening.

‘How can we get up there?’ said Rosemary anxiously.

‘Quick, the garages at the end!’ said John.

They dashed to the back of the building where a row of garages in a cobbled yard were built against the end wall of the swimming baths. Outside one of the garages, a lorry was parked, loaded with something under a tarpaulin which rose to within a few feet of the garage roof. They clambered on to the bonnet of the lorry, and from there to the roof. They scrambled over the tarpaulin, slipping and sliding on its uneven surface.

‘Here, I’ll give you a leg up on to the roof !’ said John.

An urgent, eerie cat call rose over the hissing and spitting just above them. Rosemary’s courage wavered for a moment, but she gritted her teeth and climbed on to John’s bowed back. From there she could easily reach the garage roof. She pulled herself up, the soft grass of Cat Country saving her from grazed knees and torn hands. Then, lying on her stomach, she stretched down to help John up after her.

[????????: _17.jpg]

They were on a narrow ledge with a high bank sloping steeply in front of them. Cautiously they scrambled up till they could see over the top. The bank of clouds that had lain on the horizon in a tumbled heap earlier in the evening had mounted and grown, until only here and there a gap showed serenely shining stars. It had become oppressively hot, and the spit and hiss of fighting cats was lost from time to time in the grumble of distant thunder. Dimly they could see below them a drop of several feet. Then the ground sloped gently away, but whether the surface was of grass or rock they could not see, for the whole surface heaved and tossed like a stormy sea, a sea not of waves but of fighting cats, and the air was full of strange, throaty cat taunts.

[????????: _18.jpg]

Suddenly, there was a very loud rumble of thunder followed by a flash of lightning. For one flickering second the whole scene was lit up, and just below them with his back against the little cliff was an old, old cat with a very small black animal beside him. Together they were warding off a huge, grinning sandy tom.

‘Merbeck!’ called John. ‘Calidor! It’s us, John and Rosemary.’

‘Greetings!’ panted Merbeck. ‘We can’t hold out much longer. This is our last stand!’

A second shape took its place beside Merbeck just as the sandy cat made a vicious lunge at Calidor, and another flash of lightning showed Tudge laying about him like a windmill, and the sandy cat slinking away.

‘To me, Turleys!’ he called. ‘Us’ll go down fighting!’ From the mass of shifting shapes, here and there one would shake itself clear and force its way to where Tudge and Merbeck and little Calidor stood with their backs against the cliff.

John was banging the palm of one hand with his other fist.‘Go it! Oh, go it, Tudge and Merbeck!’

‘And go it me, too!’ came in an excited squeak from Calidor.

So absorbed was John that he did not notice Rosemary tugging at his jacket and calling him anxiously.

‘John, John, you must listen!’

‘What’s the matter?’ he said impatiently.

‘Some more cats, a whole company of them, coming towards us along the ridge. I saw them in that last flash of lightning!’

‘More cats?’ said John grimly. ‘Then I should think that just about finishes it. Merbeck!’ he called through his curved hands. ‘There’s another company moving up behind you!’

‘This… is… the… end!’ panted the Councillor.

In the added gloom that seemed to follow each flash, Rosemary saw that the dark shape of the approaching animals was nearly upon them.

‘They’re here, Merbeck!’ she called desperately. ‘I can see them!’

Merbeck gave a gallant, despairing cry of,‘Who goes there?’

The answer came back clear and strong,‘I, Carbonel!’ And in a double flash of lightning they saw him standing on the high bank. His magnificent head was raised inquiringly, while behind stood a splendid company of animals. For a second they were lit up so clearly that John and Rosemary saw behind him a lean, blue-eyed cat from Siam, a thin, big-boned cat from Egypt, a long-haired Persian cat, cats black as coal, white as milk and grey as woodsmoke.

The lightning was gone, and with it the sight of the returning kings. But already the battle had begun to waver, and the whisper went around,‘Carbonel! Carbonel is back! The kings are home again!’ And as the fighting gradually faltered and came to a standstill, the shifting mass was jewelled with pairs of glowing eyes, as one by one more and more of the battle-scarred animals turned and looked up to where the kings stood on the bankabove them.

‘What is this unseemly brawling?’ asked Carbonel, and although he did not seem to raise his voice, it cut through the shuffle and murmur of the animals below so that the farthest cat on the Swimming Bath Slopes heard every syllable.

‘Is this the way you greet your king? It seems that much has happened since I went away, and there is much for me to learn.’

There was a crash of thunder and another lightning flash which showed the sea of upturned cat faces below them, and as the thunder rumbled into silence, Rosemary felt a large wet raindrop fall on the hand still holding the matchbox.

‘Tomorrow I will hear all about this night’s work, and justice shall be done. Until then, home with you where you belong!’

There was a shuffle and a murmur in the darkness below them.

‘We go, O Carbonel!’ came the answer.

The lamps of a hundred gleaming eyes seemed to go out one by one, as the shamed animals turned away. There was a sighing, rustling noise as they surged past John and Rosemary and streamed away in the darkness. One final lightning flash showed Rosemary a curious sight. A wave of animals reached the edge of what in daylight was the garage roof, and with one movement, like a drift of snow when the thaw sets in, the dark mass slid to the ground, then broke up and disappeared.

The thundery rain was falling in slow heavy drops by now, and the deep blueness of the night began to change to the thin grey that comes before the dawn. Dimly John and Rosemary could see the dark mass of Carbonel and the kings.

A deep voice said,‘We must be on our way, brothers, we have far to travel.’

‘This night’s work makes us the more anxious to return to see what awaits us.’

Somebody laughed.

‘Go on your way, my friends!’ said Carbonel. ‘And may your homecoming be more peaceable than mine!’

Against the sky, the two children saw them go, a splendid procession of cats of every kind and colour. One thing they disagreed about afterwards. Rosemary was quite sure that on every head there was a small, shining crown, but John said she imagined it. When they turned back and looked where Carbonel sat alone, he certainly wore no crown. The curves and broken lines of Cat Country seemed to waver and straighten as though they had been redrawn with a ruler. Then they realized they were no longer standing on grass but upon the wet tiles of the garage roof, with their elbows on the coping of the roof of Fallowhithe Swimming Baths.

‘Father!’ called Calidor. ‘I pushed a great, grownup tabby right out of Cat Country, honest I did. But I don’t like getting my paws wet,’ he added plaintively.

The rain was pouring down now.‘Let’s go and shelter in the bicycle shed!’ said John.

John and Rosemary sat on the rack which in the daytime held the bicycles, and Carbonel perched himself on the saddle of a machine that for some reason someone had forgotten to collect. Calidor strutted around, still full of excitement over his part in the fight, and singing a rather conceited little song. They were joined by Woppit, who had an indignant Pergamond beside her. The old cat had refused to let her join in, and together they had watched from the safety of a distant chimney pot. Merbeck was there, too. He had to be supported by Tudge because he was so exhausted.

The rain drummed on the tin roof above them, but nobody noticed it. Carbonel listened in silence to the long story. His golden eyes moved from one to another as they took up the tale in turn. When the threat to Blandamour and the kittens was told, his ears flattened and his tail lashed angrily. But when Rosemary opened the matchbox on the palm of her hand and the minute white cat stepped delicately out, he did not know whether to growl in fury or purr with pleasure that Blandamour was at least safe. In the end he did neither, and his tiny wife stretched up and licked his nose with a tongue which was no larger than the petal of a scarlet pimpernel, but was none the less loving for that. Carbonel’s eyes were troubled. Even Miss Dibdin, whom John had put down on the paving stones beside him, still inside the potted meat jar in case someone should tread on her, seemed to fill the Cat King with grave concern.

‘There is much to think about in your story,’ said Carbonel. ‘Two things only are clear; first that my family and the cats of my kingdom can never pay the debt we owe to John and Rosemary.’

Rosemary blushed a rosy red and John made embarrassed noises in his throat.

‘Secondly,’ went on Carbonel, ‘Mrs Cantrip must be curbed and the magic undone once and for all. But it has been a long night for all of us. Tomorrow we will meet again.’

‘In the Green Cave after breakfast?’ suggested John. Carbonel nodded.

‘And until then I leave my dear Blandamour in your charge.’

‘I’ve thought of the very place!’ said Rosemary. ‘My old doll’s house, and Miss Dibdin can keep her company!’

31

The Final Magic

When John and Rosemary reached home again, the rain had stopped, and the rising sun gilded the wet streets and roofs of Cranshaw Road as though they were made of beaten gold. They were too sleepy to do anything when they crept indoors except pull Rosemary’s old doll’s house out from the bottom of her wardrobe. She had not played with it for years, as was clear from the jumble of furniture inside. However, she put the bed on its feet again and made it as comfortable as she was able with folded handkerchiefs. Released from the potted meat jar, Miss Dibdin, still in a dazed condition, climbed gratefully in and Blandamour curled up beside her. The two miniature creatures seemed to find comfort in each other’s company.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ yawned John as they latched the front of the little house, ‘but I found it quite difficult to hear Carbonel talking last night. His voice seemed faint and far away.’

‘Just because we’re so tired, I expect,’ said Rosemary. ‘Come on, let’s go to bed.’

They slept late that morning, but they woke as refreshed as if the night’s adventure had been nothing but a dream.

After breakfast Rosemary tidied up the doll’s house. She gave Blandamour a tiny piece of fish and half a thimbleful of milk, and from her own breakfast she saved a piece of bacon the size of a postage stamp for Miss Dibdin, and a crumb of bread and butter. She even made her some tea in a doll’s house teacup with a single tea leaf.

‘Let’s take the whole caboodle down to the Green Cave,’ said John, so they carried it down between them.

Raindrops still glistened like diamonds on the leaves of the currant bushes. Carbonel was already there, sitting on the biscuit tin, and Merbeck with Tudge, who seemed to have taken on himself the job of personal attendant to the old Councillor. Calidor and Pergamond played about among the fallen leaves, with Woppit sitting at a respectful distance. The leaves of the currant bushes were beginning to change to yellow and orange.

Carbonel studied the doll’s house with great interest.

‘A palace for my lovely Queen, and conjured up at a moment’s notice! That is the sort of little attention I appreciate,’ he said.

‘Did all the Broomhurst cats go back?’ asked John.

‘They went,’ said Carbonel grimly. ‘A rain-soaked, shamefaced collection! There will be no more trouble with them. My old friend Castrum, the husband of Grisana, was so deeply ashamed of his wife’s wickedness that he has given up his throne to his son Gracilis. He will make a fine ruler. Heis a bachelor, but some day we hope, his father and I, that Pergamond –’

‘Your voice is awfully faint, Carbonel,’ said John. ‘We can hardly hear you speak. What is happening?’

‘The power of the red mixture is wearing off. You can take another spoonful, but not until the power of the first has entirely worn off. You had better bring the bottle with you.’

‘Bring it with us? Where to?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Fairfax Market,’ said Carbonel. ‘We have work to do. Firstly the minuscule magic must be undone. A wife who fits into a matchbox, though in many ways exquisitely beautiful, is a little inconvenient, and I dare say the little human –’

A torrent of tiny twittering came from Miss Dibdin, which they took to mean that she, too, disliked being no larger than a fountain pen.

‘Secondly,’ went on Carbonel, ‘although Mrs Cantrip has no more magic left, she is so set in her wicked ways that she will go on making mischief for someone for the rest of her life unless something is done.’

‘Wait a minute while I get Miss Dibdin’s travelling jar,’ said Rosemary.

There was a further agitated twittering from Miss Dibdin. Rosemary put her head as far as she was able into the doll’s house. By standing on the tiny table, the little creature was just tall enough to reach Rosemary’s ear, and by shouting as loudly as she could, she managed to make herself understood.

‘Not a potted meat jar,’ Miss Dibdin said indignantly. ‘So undignified!’

Rosemary ran back to the flat and returned with a green glass jar with a bow around the neck that had once contained bath salts. Carrying the jar with Miss Dibdin, and the matchbox with Blandamour curled inside, John and Rosemary headed the procession for Fairfax Market.

‘Perhaps it would help if we found something to keep Mrs Cantrip busy,’ said Rosemary. ‘Then she wouldn’t have time for much mischief.’

They had just reached the house as she spoke.

‘It looks as though she’s been pretty busy already,’ said John.

The lace curtains were gone from the window. Over the top, on a board which had been newly nailed, was some wobbly lettering, the paint still wet. It read:

K. CANTRIP, GREENGROCER

By Special Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen.

Displayed below was a box lid full of nettles and another of dandelions, a tray full of clumps of whitish stalks which might have been celery but which Rosemary suspected were hemlock. There were one or two jam jars containing a dark brown substance labelled HENBANE HONEY, and a soup plate full of toadstools of every colour of the rainbow supported a notice which said,‘Try them with bacon.’

‘We aren’t a minute too soon!’ said John. ‘Come on!’

The shop door was open as though to welcome early customers. Mrs Cantrip was sitting beside the counter she had arranged, slowly printing something on a piece of cardboard.

‘Good morning! What can I do for you?’ she said, barely looking up from her work.

‘You can give me back my Queen!’ said Carbonel.

At the sound of his voice, her pen dug deep into the cardboard in a spatter of ink. Carbonel leapt on to the counter. The black cat and the old woman stared at each other through narrowed eyes.

‘So you’re back, are you? Why should I give you back your Queen?’ said Mrs Cantrip harshly.

‘Because your day is over and your power is done!’

The old woman looked around at the ring of accusing faces. Merbeck, Tudge and Woppit had joined Carbonel on the counter. Even the kittens stared with angry eyes from the safety of Rosemary’s shoulder.

‘You’re all against me!’ she said at last. ‘Just when I’ve turned honest shopkeeper!’

‘Honest!’ said John indignantly. ‘What about those toadstools? Have you ever tried them with bacon?’

‘I shouldn’t be so silly,’ said Mrs Cantrip scornfully. ‘I can’t help what my customers do, can I? Well, can I?’

‘And the “Special Appointment to Her Majesty the Queen”,’ said Rosemary. ‘That couldn’t be true!’

‘I never said which queen, did I?’ snapped the old woman. ‘There’s a queen bee I know comes to my garden regular.’

‘But you can’t go on like this!’ said Rosemary. ‘Think of all the trouble and anxiety you’ve caused us. And then there’s Queen Blandamour and poor Miss Dibdin. Why, you’re crying! I believe you’re sorry!’

Two hard, round tears fell from Mrs Cantrip’s dimmed eyes, and steered an uneven course down her wrinkled cheeks.

‘Sorry?’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘Ah, I’m sorry right enough, but not because I made a bit of bother, not me. As promising a bit of mischief as ever I had a hand in. I’m sorry because I didn’t enjoy it. And when a witch doesn’t enjoy her wickedness any more, it means she’s finished, done for!’

‘But surely you could enjoy doing something else if you only tried?’ asked John.

‘Only if I could do the final magic, and I won’t ever be able to do that.’

‘But why not?’

‘Because I can’t do it by myself. To make it work. not one, but two people must give up the thing they value most for my sake.’

‘But what will the final magic do to you?’ asked Rosemary.

‘It will turn me into what I might have been if I’d not taken up with the ways of darkness.’

‘And if you make this final magic,’ said Carbonel, ‘what of my Queen, my Blandamour and this… this potted person here?’ He waved toward Miss Dibdin, who was anxiously peering over the edge of the green glass jar which stood on the counter.

‘The spell that changed me would undo all that is left of my magic. They’d become their own size sure enough. But what’s the good of talking? Who’d give a bent farthing for me, let alone their dearest possession?’

‘I would!’ said Rosemary.

‘And so would I!’ said John stoutly.

‘Think well what you’re saying,’ said Mrs Cantrip.

‘I’d give up my new cricket bat!’ said John.

‘I’d give my sewing box. It’s inlaid with mother of pearl, and it belonged to my great-grandmother,’ said Rosemary.

‘Think well, think well!’ said Mrs Cantrip again. For a moment her eyes looked large and appealing as they might have done when she was a girl. The slyness seemed to have been wiped from her face as though with a sponge, leaving nothing behind but a deep anxiety. ‘It must be the most preciousthing you have, or it’s no good!’

‘Oh, John,’ said Rosemary. ‘Do you remember what we said in the wood yesterday – that being able to hear Carbonel and the animals talk was the most exciting thing that had happened to us, and that we couldn’t bear it to be taken away?’

John pressed his lips tightly together. He was very pale, but he nodded.

‘Oh, Carbonel!’ said Rosemary. ‘Must it be that?’

‘If that is your most precious possession, and if you want to save Mrs Cantrip and undo her magic, it must.’

Very slowly John drew from his pocket the bottle of red mixture.

‘Come into the garden,’ said Mrs Cantrip, and led the way.

The garden was much the same as the last time Rosemary had seen it, on the day when she had escaped in the flying chair. The curious weeds were still neatly staked, and the beehive stood in the corner.

Mrs Cantrip moved the garden seat from the little square of grass. Then, in the middle of the grass, she spread the scarlet headscarf with the black squiggles. She looked around.

‘Seven! I must have seven living things of a kind.’

‘We are seven cats!’ said Carbonel, and then Merbeck, Tudge and Woppit, the two kittens and Blandamour, made a ring around the red scarf, nose to tail.

‘Can you do it without a book?’ asked John.

Mrs Cantrip nodded.

‘Every witch carries the final magic in her head. Give me the bottle.’

Very slowly John handed her the red mixture and watched her take her place in the centre of the red-silk, cat-ringed square.

‘Goodbye, Tudge, Woppit and Blandamour,’ said Rosemary, her eyes hot with tears.

‘Goodbye Tudge, Woppit and Blandamour,’ said John.

‘Not good-bye,’ said Carbonel, and his voice was so faint that the two children had to bend down to hear him. ‘You may not hear us talk again,’ he said, ‘but you will always hear us purr. Your fame will stretch far and wide, and cats of Fallowhithe will sing songs about you to their children and their children’s children. Whenever any of them purr beneath your stroking fingers, it will be a purr of gratitude, an echo of what my Queen and I will feel always in our hearts. Do not look so sad. Listen, and perhaps we can ease your…’

The last word was so faint that they could not hear it. They were standing side by side, and in her misery Rosemary clutched John’s hand. Mrs Cantrip was standing very stiff and straight. She took the cork from the bottle and poured the red mixture which would have made it possible for them to hear again, not only cats talking, but the birds in the trees, the little scuttling wood creatures, the tiny things that crawl and fly and burrow. She poured it in a ring around the seven cats. They saw her lips move silently as, with her eyes closed, she said the final magic.

Then the purring began. Carbonel began first, loud and clear, not on two pulsing notes as he usually did, but in many notes that made a solemn tune. Then Merbeck joined in, and the two sounds merged and then parted like the instruments of an orchestra. And like the instruments of an orchestra the purrs of Tudge and Woppit joined in, weaving around each other, up and down, now loud, now soft, with Calidor and Pergamond supplying their light treble, making the sweetest music they had ever heard.

John and Rosemary listened, delighted, for how long they did not know, but gradually the sorrow seemed to lift from their hearts, and although their eyes filled with tears, they were not hot tears of unhappiness. Through them the outline of Mrs Cantrip seemed to swell and waver.

‘Lend me a hankie,’ said John unsteadily. ‘I’ve lost mine.’

They took it in turns to wipe their eyes and noses, and when they looked up again they thought at first that Mrs Cantrip had gone. In her place was a tall, upright old lady. Over her neat cotton dress, she wore a gardening apron, and a pair of leather gardening gloves were on her hands. She looked down at John and Rosemary with eyes that twinkled kindly over her rather large nose.

‘You know,’ she said as though they were in the middle of a conversation, ‘animals can always tell when you like them. That’s why so many pussies come to see me.’

She bent down and stroked a magnificent white cat with blue eyes which was sitting at her feet.

‘Blandamour!’ whispered Rosemary. ‘I’m so glad you are your right size again.’

‘There is no doubt that you like cats, too!’ said Mrs Cantrip.

Blandamour and Carbonel were weaving in and out between the two children, pressing so hard against their bare legs that they found it quite hard to keep their balance. Merbeck, Tudge and Woppit had slipped away. Both children fell on their knees beside the black and the white cat.

‘Come and see us sometimes!’ whispered Rosemary, and as if in answer a rough tongue licked her cheek.

John stirred Calidor and Pergamond with his foot. They were rolling over each other in an effort to rub themselves against his right ankle.

‘Be good kittens!’ he said.

With a little‘prrt!’ Blandamour called her children to her. One behind the other, Carbonel leading, they trotted away. When they reached the flower bed they paused, gave a quick look back, and disappeared.

‘Look!’ said John. ‘The high wall has gone!’ In its place was a low fence which let the sun come streaming in. Instead of hemlock, nettles and deadly nightshade, there were roses, tiger lilies, and round, scarlet dahlias; there were marigolds and nasturtiums and sweet-scented stock.

Mrs Cantrip was cutting a bunch of sweet peas which she said were for Mrs Brown, and while she snipped away she talked over her shoulder.

‘Very good of Mr Fudge to give me the morning off. But of course after working with him for so long… What’s the matter, dear?’

‘Hedgem and Fudge? Do you work there?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Of course! I’ve been dispensing for him for years.’

John and Rosemary looked at each other in a puzzled way.

‘Luckily Albert Flackett is back at work again,’ she went on. ‘He seems quite recovered, and he tells me he and Myrtle are getting married soon. I’m so glad! Ah, here comes Dorothy with the lemonade.’

They turned. Miss Dibdin, her own size and none the worse for her adventure, was coming out of the house carrying a tray with two glasses on it. She gave no sign of anything except pleasure at their approval of the lemonade. The children drank it politely.

‘Miss Dibdin,’ said John, as he replaced his empty glass on the tray. ‘Have you known Mrs Cantrip for long?’

Miss Dibdin laughed comfortably.

‘Why, Katie and I have been friends since we both wore plaits. We were at school together!’

‘It’s very puzzling,’ John said on the way home as they turned to look back at the front of the house. The neat front door was pale yellow now, and golden linen curtains hung at the windows, which were edged with flower-filled window boxes.

‘I suppose the magic had to work backwards,’ said Rosemary. ‘Mrs Cantrip couldn’t become what she might have been, without having been all the other things she might have been before.’

John nodded. He seemed to understand, as I hope you do, too.

‘How kind of Mrs Cantrip!’ said her mother when Rosemary gave her the bunch of sweet peas from Mrs Cantrip’s garden.

‘Mother, have you known her for long?’

‘Why, she’s one of my oldest customers!’ said Mrs Brown.

‘She has lived with that friend of hers – Miss Dibdin – ever since I can remember,’ said Mr Featherstone, who was suddenly there again. ‘I’m just going down to my flat for a minute – I’ve left a large block of ice cream on the kitchen table. Your mother and I thought we ought to have a celebration. Come with me, John.’

John went off with Mr Featherstone. Mrs Brown had buried her face in the bunch of sweet peas.

‘I think Mr Featherstone ought to have a lift put in. Then he wouldn’t have to keep running up and down the stairs when he comes to see us every day,’ said Rosemary.

Her mother lifted her face from the bunch of flowers. It was as pink as the sweet peas.

‘I can think of a better plan, darling,’ she said. ‘Supposing he came to live here with us. Would you like that, Rosie?’ She paused for a moment, and then she said with a rush, ‘We’re going to be married!’

Rosemary’s eyes were round as saucers.

‘Mummy, how lovely!’ she said.

As she spoke, John came bursting in, and by the way he pumped Mrs Brown’s hand up and down and grinned from ear to ear, it was quite clear that he had been let into the secret and entirely approved. As for Mr Featherstone, he said shyly, ‘Will I do, Rosie? I’ll take such care of you both!’

‘I should just think you will do!’ said Rosemary, and they laughed and talked until Mrs Brown said, ‘My goodness, the chicken will be ruined!’ and rushed into the kitchen. But it was not ruined, it was cooked to a turn. When they had all eaten as much as they could manage, Rosemary gave a great sigh.

‘A father, and a high school, and chicken for dinner altogether. How perfectly gorgeous!’

The wedding was a quiet one, but among the guests were Mrs Cantrip and Miss Dibdin. As Mr and Mrs Featherstone left the church, not only a black cat, but a snow-white one as well, ran across their path as though to wish them luck.

3. CARBONEL AND CALIDOR

1. The Puzzle

ROSEMARY guessed it was kippers for breakfast by the smell that tickled her nose when she poked her head through the neck of her sweater. It told her too that she was late, so she ran downstairs, picking up the letters from the door-mat on her way into the kitchen.

‘Two for you,’ she said to her step-father. ‘They’ve both got little windows in them, so I expect they’re only bills. And one for you, Mum.’

‘I hope your letters are nicer than mine,’ said Mr Featherstone to his wife after a pause.

‘I’m pretty sure Rosemary will think so,’ she replied. ‘There’s something inside which I think must be meant for you, dear.’

As she spoke she handed Rosemary a small wad of paper that had been folded over and over so many times that it was not much bigger than a pat of butter. On the outside was a figure 4, and under that was a drawing of a flower, done by someone who was clearly not very good at drawing.

‘Whatever …?’ began Rosemary, and then she stopped. ‘Of course,’ she said to herself. ‘The flower is meant to be a rose. “For Rose.” That’s me!’

Only one person was likely to address a letter to her in such a secret, roundabout way, and, her kipper forgotten, she undid the screw of paper. Beneath the first fold was printed in large letters: IMPORTANT. Under the next fold was: VERY IMPORTANT, and the next: EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. In fact, when she finally smoothed out the sheet of paper, there were so many‘importants’ that there was not much room left for a message; but squeezed into a corner in very small writing, she read: ‘Do if you can. Uncle Zack is good fun, but it will be dull on my own.’ It was signed: ‘John’.

‘Oh, please may I?’ asked Rosemary eagerly.

‘May you what?’ asked her step-father, as he helped himself to marmalade.

‘Well, whatever it is John wants me to do, of course!’ said Rosemary.

Her mother laughed.

‘It’s a good thing John’s mother is better at explaining things than he is! Apparently he is going to spend the Easter holidays with his uncle at Highdown. Isn’t that the village the other side of Fallowhithe? Well, it seems his uncle is afraid that without someone his own age it won’t bemuch fun for John, so he wants him to bring a friend.’

‘You mean he wantsme to go?’ said Rosemary.

‘Wait a minute, I haven’t finished the letter yet,’ said her mother. ‘Now where was I? Oh yes … “Our house has to be re-wired for electricity”,’ she read, “‘and you know what that means! Floor boards up, and endless upheaval, so Zachary wants John to come and stay with him till it’s finished. He is my husband’s eldest brother, and John’s godfather. He will be rather busy with the antique shop he runs on the edge of the village, which is why he wants John to have a companion. He is not married, but he has an old housekeeper who has been with him for years, and I know she will keep an eye on the two of them. John says he would rather have Rosemary than anyone else, so I hope you will let her go.”’

‘You will, won’t you?’ asked Rosemary.

‘What do you think?’ said Mrs Featherstone to her husband.

‘I don’t see why not,’ he replied. ‘Though the ancient housekeeper is going to have her work cut out, from what I seem to remember of you and John when you get together. She doesn’t know what she’s in for! Wasn’t there some game you used to play — now what was it? I know a witch’shat came into it somewhere!’

Mr Featherstone laughed heartily. Rosemary did not laugh.

‘It wasn’t …’ she began quickly, and then she stopped. The mention of a witch’s hat had stirred something at the back of her mind that she had quite forgotten. It had not been a game; of that she was certain. But how was it possible to explain, when all she could remember was such a jumble in her own mind, like a broken reflection in a pool of water? Rosemary sat puzzling over this with a piece of buttered toast halfway to her mouth. Perhaps John would be able to clear up the mystery. She was suddenly aware of her mother saying:

‘Rosie! Rosiedear! Do come to! I’ve asked you three times.’

‘Sorry,’ said Rosemary. ‘I was thinking. Asked me what?’

‘Whether you’d like John to come and stay for the weekend, as soon as you break up next week?’

‘And then we can take you both over to Highdown on Monday,’ said her step-father, ‘and meet Uncle Zachary and the unsuspecting housekeeper.’

‘That would be gorgeous!’ said Rosemary, in an enthusiastic but muffled voice, round the piece of toast which had at last found its way to her mouth. ‘It’s a funny thing,’ she went on to herself, ‘I’m not an adventure kind of person as a rule, but whenever John and I are together things seem to happen.’

‘I say,’ she said, several days later. ‘What is your uncle like, John? I wish you’d tell me.’

It was the morning after the evening he had arrived: a taller, thinner John than before, with unnaturally tidy hair. They were sitting on the garden seat under the apple tree.

‘He’s rather hard to describe. He’s very tall and straight and thin, with big spectacles. Dad says he can’t think how he manages to keep his antique shop going, because he hates selling so many things. He gets quite cross when people buy his favourite bits of furniture. But he’s super really. The sort of person who lets you get on with your own thing without interfering, but he’s there when you want him.’

Rosemary nodded.‘I think I’m going to like him.’

‘One day last summer he was just going to …’

‘Last summer,’ interrupted Rosemary. ‘Why do you think we can’t either of us remember what we did when you came to stay?’

‘How you do go on about last summer! It is a bit funny we don’t either of us remember,’ he said. ‘P’raps we got hit on the head and lost our memories, and we shan’t get them back till we are clonked again, like people in books!’ He laughed. ‘Either that or we’re plain bewitched … What’s the matter?’

‘Bewitched! That’s it! It was magic that happened!’

‘Magic?’ said John. ‘Oh, grow up, Rosie! I was just fooling. Only soppy kids believe in magic. Anyway, what does it matter what we did last summer? All I know is that we had a gorgeous time.’

John didn’t notice Rosemary’s crimson face. Torn between anxiety that he should not think her a ‘soppy kid’, and the certainty that itwas something magic that had happened, she held her tongue, but she said to herself:‘This is awful. Whatever’s happened to John? And this stuff about magic. I’msure …’ But was she sure?

They sat in silence: John with his hands in his pockets, legs outstretched, bouncing his heels up and down on the grass, and Rosemary uncomfortably popping blisters of paint on the wooden slats. Her thoughts went on miserably: Suppose he’s feeling it’s awful because I don’t feel the way he does any more? That’s two awfuls. And I’ve got to go and stay with him in a strange house with a strange uncle, and that’s the most awful, awful of all. And yet there was the ‘4 Rose’ letter, which belonged to the old familiar John.

The uncomfortable silence was broken by her mother, who came down the garden path with three mugs of hot chocolate and a tin of ginger biscuits on a tray.

‘Hallo, dears!’ she said, as she sat down beside them. ‘I thought you might be feeling hungry. Help yourselves.’ She picked up a mug and began to sip her chocolate. ‘By the way, would you be kind children and do an errand for me? Mrs Cantrip rang up this morning … Good gracious, poor John! He’s choking. Pat him on the back, Rosie!’

Rosemary thumped him heartily between the shoulder blades. When he had recovered his breath, a red-faced John said:

‘Sorry … drink and biscuit … got mixed up and went the wrong way. Mrs Cantrip, did you say?’

Mrs Featherstone nodded.‘You remember her, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes!’ said John. ‘Does she still live in that funny little house in Fairfax Market with her friend? What was her name? Dibdin, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, they’re still there,’ said Mrs Featherstone. ‘But with so much building going on all round them I shouldn’t think they’ll want to stay much longer.’

‘It used to be a queer, old-fashioned sort of place,’ said John. He frowned in a puzzled way, and ran his fingers through his hair. Suddenly he looked at Rosemary and grinned. The grin, and the ruffled hair, both belonged to the John of last summer. Perhaps, thought Rosemary, the differentness was only a sort of outside skin, and it was going to be all right after all. She beamed happily back at him.

‘I want you to take a recipe I promised her,’ said Mrs Featherstone. ‘When Mrs Cantrip heard you were here, John, she said she would love to see you, and if you both went this afternoon perhaps you could stay for a cup of tea. But if you’d rather not go, of course I could post the recipe.’

‘Oh no, I should love to!’ said John, with such enthusiasm that Mrs Featherstone looked at him in mild surprise.

‘Splendid!’ she said, and got up from the seat. ‘Bring the tray in with you when you’ve finished, dears. I must go and make a steak and kidney pie for dinner, so don’t eat too many biscuits.’

John watched her go.

‘Do you really want to go to Fairfax Market?’ asked Rosemary. ‘Or were you just being polite?’

‘Heavens no!’ said John. ‘Of course I want to go.’ He frowned thoughtfully. ‘You know, I think Mrs Cantrip and Miss Dibdin have something to do with that business we can’t remember. It suddenly came into my head when your mother mentioned Mrs Cantrip’s name. That’s what made me choke over my biscuit. And I say …’ he wriggled uncomfortably. ‘I’m sorry I was so squashing, about magic, I mean. It might happen … to some people.’

‘Us?’ said Rosemary.

‘Perhaps,’ replied John cautiously.

‘That’s six,’ said Rosemary.

‘Six what?’

‘Biscuits.’

‘Crikey, is it really? Funny how you can go on eating them without noticing. Let’s go and play space-ships in the greenhouse.’

So they did.

2. Crumpet

‘IT’s all different,’ said John that afternoon when they reached Fairfax Market. ‘All those new, tall buildings and grand shops! Where is Mrs Cantrip’s house?’

‘Over there, squeezed in between two blocks of offices. Let’s cross the road while there’s a hold-up.’

Mrs Cantrip’s house was so small, and the buildings on either side so very large, that it looked as though it might be cracked like a walnut in between the two of them. But the paint gleamed white and fresh on the woodwork, and the brass knocker shone in the afternoon sunlight. In response to their tap the door was opened by a short, roundabout person. John recognized her as Mrs Cantrip’s friend, Miss Dibdin. She peered at them short-sightedly.

‘Bother! It’s only you!’ she said ungraciously, and then went on hurriedly, forcing a polite smile: ‘How dreadfully rude of me! But I hoped you were the postman. I’m expecting an extremely important parcel. Of course I’m glad to see you really. Come in, my dears, Katie is so looking forward to seeing you.’

The front door opened directly into the little sitting-room. It was a cheerful place, neat and shining with much polishing of furniture, with a vase of daffodils on the table. Rosemary noticed a faint smell, as though the flower water needed changing, which was odd when everything else seemed so well cared for.

Mrs Cantrip was sitting in a flower-patterned armchair, knitting something in mauve wool. She rose at once to welcome them, holding out both hands as she did so.

‘Why, John and Rosemary,’ she cried. ‘How delightful! Gracious me, how you’ve both grown! Now come and sit down and tell me all about yourselves. John, dear, could you rescue my knitting for me?’

A handsome black cat with white paws was chasing her ball of wool so that it was already tangled round the legs of several chairs. Rosemary tried to hold the creature while John unwound the thread, but the cat turned and spat at her, so she let it go.

‘Crumpet, you bad puss!’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘I’m afraid he is rather naughty. Do you know, he just walked in one day a short time ago and adopted Dorothy! He won’t allow anyone else to touch him.’

She turned to the open door. Miss Dibdin was standing on the pavement outside, gazing across Fairfax Market under the shadow of her hand.

‘Dorothy, dear!’ called Mrs Cantrip impatiently. ‘Do come in and close the door. Such a draught! I told you, the postman has already gone by.’

Miss Dibdin turned and reluctantly came inside.

‘I know the postman’s been,’ she said peevishly. ‘But my parcel might come by special messenger, or something.’

‘Well,’ said Mrs Cantrip crisply, ‘as you won’t tell me what’s in this precious parcel of yours, or where it’s coming from, I can’t help; so I may as well go and put the kettle on. Then we can have a cosy chat with John and Rosemary over a nice cup of tea. It’s all ready, dears. I shall only be a minute.’

She put her knitting on the table, looked at the cat, thought better of it and placed the woolly bundle out of reach, on top of a high bookcase. Crumpet watched her slyly through half-closed eyes, then he padded to the hearthrug, curled himself up with his chin on his tail, as close to the fire as he was able, and closed his eyes. Miss Dibdin laughed.

‘You can see why we call him Crumpet,’ she said. ‘He will toast himself as near to the fire as he possibly can. How long are you staying with Rosemary, John?’

‘Only for the weekend,’ he said.

‘What a pity,’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘I have just retired from teaching, and I thought it would be rather jolly to have a little party on Monday for a few of the senior girls. That’s why I asked Katie to find out your mother’s recipe for short-cake, Rosemary.’

‘And how we shall all squeeze into our tiny sitting-room I don’t know!’ added Mrs Cantrip cheerfully, as she returned with the tea-tray. ‘Oh, Dorothy, I’ve forgotten the chocolate biscuits. They are in the kitchen cupboard, top shelf, dear.’

She watched Miss Dibdin with an anxious frown as she disappeared into the kitchen, and went on in a lowered voice:‘To tell you the truth I’m worried about Dorothy. She’s not …’ She paused as though she couldn’t think of the right word. ‘Not … very well. I’m glad she has stopped working. For the last three weeks she has behaved in such a strange, mysterious way. I know you can’t call that a proper symptom, like spots, or a temperature, but it’s so unlike her.’

‘She does look rather different from last summer,’ said Rosemary.

‘Sort of … beaky about the face, although she’s still quite fat,’ said John. He stopped, not sure if he had been rude, but Mrs Cantrip didn’t seem offended.

‘A very good way of describing her,’ she said, and lifted a warning finger as her friend returned with the biscuit tin.

‘I was just wondering,’ said Miss Dibdin, ‘whether you would be able to put off going away until Tuesday, so that you could both come to my little party? Such nice girls, and all of them prefects!’

Rosemary was just opening her mouth to say they’d love to, when she caught sight of John’s horrified face, so she cleared her throat instead and went on: ‘Of course we should like to, but we’re going to stay with John’s uncle at Highdown.’

Miss Dibdin gave a little screech.

‘Well, what a coincidence! That’s just where I’m going the day after the party, to do some house-hunting! Fairfax Market has changed so, and not for the better. So we thought we’d move to a little cottage in the country — if I can find something suitable.’

‘Of course, I shall be sorry to leave the Market in many ways, after so long,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘But what with all this building, and the noise …’ As she spoke, above the hum of the traffic outside, they heard an eerie, wailing cry. ‘There’s that cat again!’ she went on, as the sound was repeated, rising higher and higher, till at last it sank to a low bubbling murmur.

At the first wild note, Crumpet had leapt to his feet, ears back, coat bristling, and his green eyes wide. He stood with lifted head as the cry died away, then he dashed for cover beneath the frill of Mrs Cantrip’s armchair, where they heard him swearing quietly to himself behind the flowery frill.

‘Whenever he hears that cat, Crumpet runs and hides under my chair!’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘Milk and sugar, Rosemary?’

Miss Dibdin, who was on her knees trying to persuade Crumpet to come out, and assuring him that the‘nasty rough animal’ shouldn’t do him any harm, suddenly sat back on her heels.

‘Was that someone at the door? Do go and see, John.’

He looked out into the Market.

‘There’s nobody there,’ he said.

‘Oh bother your old parcel!’ said Mrs Cantrip cheerfully. ‘I suppose it’s to do with this mysterious hobby you’ve taken up. Surely you can tell us that much?’

Miss Dibdin frowned for a moment. At last she nodded.‘Yes,’ she said slowly. ‘It is to do with my … er … hobby. Well, now I’ve retired I must have something to do. I can’t sit and twiddle my thumbs all day. I’ll tell you what I can about the parcel. Not what’s inside, because I don’t know.’

‘All this fuss, and you don’t even know what’s inside it!’ said Mrs Cantrip.

Miss Dibdin went on as though she had not heard.

‘I’ve been doing a correspondence course. You know, lessons by post. I shan’t tell you what in, because I know you’d disapprove, Katie. Well, I learned all I could about … about my hobby, from books and so on, and was just ready to start on some practical work, when the correspondence course people wrote and said they were closing down. Not enough customers. So disappointing!’

‘Does that mean you can’t go on with it? Your hobby, I mean?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Certainly not,’ said Miss Dibdin, stirring her tea with vigour. ‘They went on to say they would tell a local shop to send me a Do-It-Yourself Kit instead, with instructions how to use it, if I would send the money and the postage. So of course I wrote off at once. But nothing has come.’

‘Why didn’t you go to the shop and make inquiries?’ said Mrs Cantrip.

‘I did,’ said Miss Dibdin shortly, ‘when a week had gone by. It was the other side of the town, in a queer little back street. “NOSTRADAMUS LTD. Fancy Goods” it said over the window, which was full of all kinds of rubbish. False noses and paper hats, and tricks to play on people, and the sort of thing that conjurers use: wands and top hats and so on. They were having a sale.’

‘I say, I like that kind of shop,’ said John. ‘Couldn’t Rosie and I go and fetch your parcel for you?’

Miss Dibdin didn’t answer at first. She was staring into her tea-cup as though it was something other than the dregs of tea she saw there.

‘It was dark and poky inside the shop,’ she went on at last, as though she hadn’t heard. ‘When I rapped on the counter, a queer little old man with a long beard came out from the back and said, yes, he had had the order, but he was short of staff, and had done nothing about it, and wouldn’t I take the parcel back with me instead, as I was there?’

‘Well, why didn’t you?’ asked Mrs Cantrip.

‘Because I’d got too much to carry already. All those groceries, and a box of crackers for the party. They were on the counter, marked down to half-price. I know there’s nothing inside them as a rule except rubbishy gew-gaws. But they do help to make a party go. Besides,’ went on Miss Dibdin in an aggrieved voice, ‘I’dpaid for the postage. Quite cross with him I had to be. When at last I told him to stop arguing and pack up the box of crackers, and see that the other parcel was sent to Fairfax Market at once, he began to laugh. More of a cackle it was really. Then he took the cracker box to the back of the shop. Quite a long time he was over it.’

‘But didn’t you ask him when you could expect your precious parcel to arrive?’ asked Mrs Cantrip.

‘Of course I did,’ said Miss Dibdin, ‘and all he said was: “It’ll be there the minute you’re home yourself, ma’am.” His very words. And then he went off into such a fit of cackling I thought he’d do himself a mischief. So I came away and left him to it. But there was no sign of the parcel when I got home. So disappointing.’

‘How funny,’ said Rosemary. ‘Did you go back again and tell him?’

‘That’s the queer part,’ said Miss Dibdin slowly. ‘When I went the second time the shop wasn’t there. It was number thirteen. I distinctly remember seeing it written up over the door that first time. But there wasn’t a number thirteen any more. The neighbours said there never had been. But I’m still hoping that the parcel will come.’

‘Well, if you will only stop being mysterious, and tell me where you’re staying at Highdown, I’ll send it after you if it comes,’ said Mrs Cantrip. ‘Besides, you might arrange for John and Rosemary to come and see you there.’

‘I can’t tell you what I don’t know!’ snapped Miss Dibdin. ‘I am going to Highdown Station where I shall be met by … by a friend. Besides, I shall be far too busy for callers. How you do badger a body, Katie! And another thing, I mean to take Crumpet with me.’

The cat, now quite recovered from his fright, was weaving round Miss Dibdin’s ankles. ‘He shall help me choose a house for us to live in. Shan’t he, my pussididdlums!’

‘Help you choose a house? Really, Dorothy, I never heard such nonsense!’ said Mrs Cantrip sharply. But clearly feeling it was time to change the subject, she turned to John and Rosemary. ‘How kind of your mother to let me have her favourite recipe! John, dear, do have another piece of cake.’

The rest of the tea-party passed quite pleasantly, though Miss Dibdin rose several times to answer imaginary knocks on the door.

3. The Purple Cracker

WHEN at last John and Rosemary got up to go, Mrs Cantrip said:‘I tell you what, Dorothy! As these two can’t come to the party on Monday, don’t you think it would be a good idea if they chose a pretty cracker to take home instead?’

‘Splendid!’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘Why didn’t I think of it? Rosemary, you know which is my room? Run upstairs, dear, and take whichever one you fancy. They are in a brown paper parcel on my dressing-table.’

As she climbed the narrow stairs, Rosemary couldn’t help thinking that to pull crackers at a party was one thing, but to pull one without any jollification beforehand didn’t seem quite the right thing to do.

The small bedroom was dark and rather stuffy. The faint smell of stale flower water was stronger here, although she could see no flowers. Although the room was neat and tidy in every other way, on the hearthrug, before the old-fashioned gas-fire, was a large untidy pile of twigs.

‘What a funny thing to have in your bedroom!’ said Rosemary to herself. ‘Ow!’ she went on. She had caught her ankle against a long stick which had been leaning against the wall. It fell with a clatter. Rosemary picked it up and looked at it curiously before propping it up again. It was about four feet long, rather crooked, with the twigs that had grown from it very roughly hacked off.

She found the brown paper parcel and undid the plastic ribbon that took the place of string. It had‘NOSTRADAMUS LTD. Fancy Goods’ printed on it all the way along its length, so she knew it was what she was looking for. Rosemary took off the lid of the cardboard box inside. The crackers were fat and pink and spangled at the ends. Each one had a shiny picture of a flower stuck on in the middle. They were kept neatly in place by two strands of thread; but lying loose on top, slightly squashed, for there was not really room for it, was a single cracker, clearly of a different kind. It was made of dark purple, crinkled paper, and instead of a flower it had a plain shape glued to it, which looked like a five-pointed star. It seemed a pity to disturb the neat pink row, so she took the loose purple cracker and slipped it into her pocket. When she ran downstairs she found John already standing by the door and ready to go.

‘I say,’ he said as they walked down the street. ‘That was decent of you to let me off the party. What a ghastly idea, six girl prefects and me the only boy!’

‘Miss Dibdin didn’t seem very anxious to meet us at Highdown,’ said Rosemary. ‘I wonder what’s inside her mysterious parcel?’

‘Another funny thing,’ said John, ‘saying she was being met at Highdown Station. It’s been closed for donkey’s years. There aren’t any trains.’

‘Bother!’ said Rosemary when they reached the bus stop. ‘Nobody here. It looks as though we’ve just missed one. Now we shall have to wait for the next.’

‘Let’s pull that silly old cracker while we’re waiting,’ said John. Rosemary took it from her pocket and held it up. ‘What a crumby, squashed-looking thing!’ They both giggled. ‘Here give me an end. When I say “go” we both pull.’

The purple paper of the cracker was tough, and they had to tug really hard before it gave way at last, so suddenly, that Rosemary nearly fell over backwards, which set them off giggling once more.

‘What a great bang!’ she said. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever pulled such a noisy cracker. Did you see all those coloured sparks when it went off?’

John was peering down the torn end of the tube of paper.

‘Well, it looks as though coloured sparks is about all we’re going to get. I can’t see anything inside, though I expect there’s a motto. What a rotten cracker!’

Rosemary watched as he tore open the crumpled paper and pulled out a small printed slip.‘Go on! What does the motto say?’

He was peering at the tiny print, for it was beginning to grow dusk. He cleared his throat and began to read:

‘Choose your wishes carefully

Seven steps to gramarye

Build each wish upon another…’

He broke off.‘Boring old grammar.’

‘But what on earth does it mean?’ said Rosemary.

‘Search me. Some silly grownup joke, I suppose,’ said John. He passed her the slip of paper. She shrugged her shoulders, and pushed it into her coat pocket.

‘What’s that in the gutter?’ said John.

Rosemary stooped and picked up a small, neat packet.‘A paper hat, I expect,’ she said, and breaking the band that held it together, undid the little roll of tissue paper inside, and smoothed it out.

‘What a funny-looking hat!’ said John. ‘Black and pointed!’

Rosemary did her best to make the crumpled point stick up, and then she put it on. It was a good deal too big, and half extinguished her face.

‘Good heavens!’ said John. ‘I believe it’s a witch’s hat! You do look a Charlie in it!’ he said, and collapsed into giggles again. Suddenly Rosemary didn’t want to laugh any more. She felt strangely solemn.

‘Let’s look round and see if anything else fell out,’ she said.

‘What was it Miss Dibdin said about crackers?’ said John.

‘That they only had “rubbishy gew-gaws inside”. I remember thinking what a funny word it was. Gew-gaws I mean.’

‘What’s that?’ interrupted John.

Rosemary looked where he was pointing. In a crack between the paving stones something glittered, redly. The street lamp above had been suddenly switched on, and whatever it was lit up like an unwinking red eye. John stooped and picked it up.

[????????: _2.jpg]

‘It’s a ring,’ he said. They peered at it for a moment as it lay on the palm of his hand, then Rosemary slipped it on to her forefinger and admired it at arm’s length. The broad gold band in which the stone was set was made for a much larger hand than hers.

‘What an enormous piece of glass for a stone!’ said John.

‘P’raps it isn’t glass,’ said Rosemary. ‘It seems to … well, smoulder inside. How queer. I don’t think it’s “rubbishy”, whatever Miss Dibdin says.’ She looked at the shining band round her finger. ‘I think it’s agolden gew-gaw!’

‘I say, what a long time this bus is being,’ said John. ‘If I had a motor bike we shouldn’t have to wait. Or better still, I wish I had my own private aeroplane.’

‘So do I,’ said Rosemary, tapping her feet impatiently, and suddenly, she didn’t know why, she began to sing.

‘Oh so do I,

I wish I could fly

A little way up

And then I’d come down,

I’d be a bit scared

To fly over the town.’

As she sang, she began to dance in a circle. When she got to‘over the town’ she made a great soaring leap in the air …

And then she came down, smack, so that the soles of her feet tingled. At the same time, the ring, which was far too big for her finger, fell off and bounced on to the pavement.

John looked at her with surprise.

‘Whatever made me do that?’ said Rosemary in a puzzled voice.

‘I thought you were going to take off,’ said John. ‘It made me feel quite queer!’

Rosemary had picked up the ring again. She pushed up the paper hat so that she could see it better.

‘John, why did you say that, when I was dancing about?’ she asked suddenly.

‘Say what?’

‘Just before the ring fell off, you said “John and Rosemary, help”!’

‘I didn’t!’ said John indignantly.

‘You must have done!’ said Rosemary. ‘I heard you say it, twice, quite distinctly, in a funny sort of voice. It must have been you. There was nobody else here.’

‘But why on earth should I say “John and Rosemary, help”? You must be off your nut! You’ll be saying next it was that great black cat who’s been staring at us from the alleyway there! But look out, here comes the bus. Better take that silly thing off your head.’

Rosemary clutched the paper hat and crammed it into her pocket with the ring, and together they ran to the bus stop. (Searching for things out of the cracker, they had moved quite a long way down the pavement.)

Rosemary was the first to jump on the bus. She heard an exclamation from John behind her, but she had no time to look round. It was a double-decker, so they went upstairs.

‘We’ve got the whole of the top to ourselves,’ said John. ‘Super!’

With all the seats to choose from, of course they chose to sit in front.

‘Did you see that black cat?’ he went on. ‘The one that was staring at us? It nearly tripped me up just as I was going to jump on the bus!’

‘I was thinking about black cats,’ went on Rosemary thoughtfully. ‘You know, I believe last summer … What are you poking me for?’

‘Shut up!’ said John in a whisper. ‘Talking of black cats, look over your shoulder.’

Rosemary turned. Sitting on the seat behind was a magnificent cat. It was coal black, from the top of its sleek head to the tip of its tail, with a wide span of snow-white whiskers curving on either side of its disdainfully raised nose. It sat calmly on the seat, paws neatly together, gazing fixedly at the two children with large amber eyes, as self-possessed as though it were quite used to travelling by bus, and had already paid its fare. John and Rosemary stared back, and then with one voice they shouted :

‘Carbonel!’

The black cat jumped down from the seat. After wreathing round their ankles for a moment, he jumped up, first on to Rosemary’s lap, and then on to John’s, stepping from one to the other, kneading their thighs with his front paws, and thrusting the firm silkiness of his head beneath the chin of each of them in turn, and all the time purring so loudly that they could hear the small warm waves of sound even above the noises of the bus.

‘Now I remember,’ said Rosemary. ‘It was Carbonel we had adventures with last year!’

‘Of course it was!’ said John, as he stroked the black cat, running his hand from head to tail, feeling the firm body beneath the soft fur. ‘Good old Carbonel!’

At that moment the bus stopped, and several passengers came clambering up the stairs. Carbonel jumped to the floor, and disappeared discreetly under the seat, until it was time for John and Rosemary to get off, when he slipped down behind them, a silent black shadow, padding beside them along the darkening street.

‘I wonder why he’s following us?’ said Rosemary.

‘If only he could tell us …’ began John. ‘Look out, Carbonel!’ he went on. ‘That’s twice you’ve nearly tripped me up!’

‘Let’s take him home and give him a saucer of milk,’ said Rosemary. ‘That is, if he comes with us that far.’

4. Carbonel

SURE enough, the black cat was close on their heels when they reached home. He trotted straight into the kitchen, sat down in the middle of the floor and looked up at them expectantly.

Rosemary took off her jacket and dropped it on a chair; then she fetched some milk and poured it into a saucer and put it on the floor. Carbonel flashed a long look at them before settling down to a steady lap-lap, lap-lap, from the china rim. They watched the white circle of milk grow smaller and smaller.

‘He might have understood every word we said as we walked from the bus, the way he kept looking at us,’ said John.

‘I know,’ answered Rosemary. ‘Though I wouldn’t have thought all that talk about Highdown and Uncle Zack would have interested him. How funny that Miss Dibdin should be going there just when we are — even if she didn’t seem very pleased about it.’

‘And funnier still that she’s going to take that cat with her,’ went on John. ‘What was its name? Crumpet, wasn’t it?’

Rosemary laughed and nodded.‘Whoever heard of a cat …’ she began, and stopped abruptly as John nudged her sharply.

‘Look at Carbonel,’ he whispered.

There was still a small white disc of milk at the bottom of the saucer, but at the word‘Crumpet’, he had raised his head with a jerk. He stood with splayed legs and flattened ears, the sleek fur along his back bristling as they watched. Suddenly he spat, viciously.

‘Hi! Steady on. Whatever is the matter?’ asked John.

‘It was the creamy top of the milk, and one of the best saucers with the flowery pattern!’ said Rosemary reproachfully. ‘What more do you want?’

For answer, Carbonel turned his back on them disdainfully, and with tail erect, padded towards the chair on which lay Rosemary’s coat. He began to pat a hanging sleeve, first on one side and then on the other, leaping and pouncing on its dangling end so that it swung from side to side.

‘Here! Look out!’ said Rosemary, as an extra-vigorous cuff brought it slithering to the ground.

As it fell, something red and glittering spun across the floor, till it came to rest against the table leg.

‘The Golden Gew-Gaw!’ said Rosemary, and picked up the ring. Carbonel watched her eagerly. ‘What a pity it’s too big to wear. I believe we could both put our little fingers through it at the same time. Here, hold your hand up, John.’

‘You silly twit!’ said John, but he grinned, and did as she asked. Sure enough, the ring slipped easily over both his little finger and Rosemary’s when they held them upraised, side by side. They both laughed, but stopped abruptly when Carbonel said loudly and distinctly: ‘You always were slow on the uptake, the pair of you!’

Both the children’s heads whipped round.

‘Carbonel!’ they said with one voice.

‘Making me caper round like a silly kitten!’ said the black cat. ‘Not that you don’t do your best, but I’ve been trying to make you understand for hours.’

‘Understand what?’ said John.

‘That I wanted you to put the ring on again, so that you can hear me talk. As soon as I saw it fall from the purple cracker, and young Rosemary here beginning to spout poetry, and acting so daft, when she’d got it on her finger, Iguessed it was magic. And Iknew it was, when I called for help and she heard me. But you wouldn’t believe her,’ he added, flashing a golden reproachful look at John.

‘Do you mean at the bus stop?’ said John. ‘Then it was you lurking in the alleyway?’

‘I happened to be there,’ said Carbonel coldly. ‘Inever lurk. You forget, I am a royal cat.’

‘Sorry,’ said John. ‘But the ring. Is it really magic?’

‘It must be,’ said Carbonel. ‘But what sort I don’t know. For there are many kinds of magic.’

Rosemary hurriedly slipped her finger from the golden band, then, realizing that without it she could not hear Carbonel, as hurriedly poked it back again.

‘Both Rosie and I seem to remember getting mixed up in some sort of magic business last summer,’ went on John. ‘But it’s all smudged and misty, as though someone has tried to rub it out. All we can remember is that you were there too.’

‘Maybe I was,’ said Carbonel. ‘But I remember no more than you. There’s magic in that too. If it wants to be forgot, best let it lie. The trouble is that once magic is in your blood it attracts more magic, as sure as a magnet attracts a packet of pins. You’re likely to have another go of it.’

‘Like malaria,’ said John. ‘That’s a sort of fever. Uncle Zack had it in India when he was quite young, ages ago, and it still comes back sometimes.’

‘Oh, bother Uncle Zack’s malaria!’ said Rosemary. ‘Carbonel said he wanted us to help him. Dear Carbonel, what’s the matter?’

‘Sit down on the floor, and I will tell you,’ he said. ‘I’m getting a crick in my neck with all this squinneying up at you. Grown like a couple of runner-beans you have, since I saw you last.’

John and Rosemary sat cross-legged on the kitchen floor with Carbonel facing them, sitting very upright in the middle of the folds of Rosemary’s coat, his tail curled neatly round his paws. She noticed that his muzzle was flecked with grey.

[????????: _3.jpg]

‘What’s the trouble?’ asked John.

‘Calidor, my son, heir to the Throne of Fallowhithe Cats, he is the trouble,’ said Carbonel.

‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Rosemary.

‘Matter?’ went on Carbonel. ‘Wickedness is the matter. Wickedness and folly! Here have I been training him, day in, day out, for the high office that will one day be his, and what does he do? First he gets into bad company and refuses to make the marriage that was planned for him since he wasa kitten …’ He paused and swallowed, as though steeling himself to go on. ‘And then one day, after saying he didn’t care a herring bone who is King of Fallowhithe when I am gone, he runs away. Disappears without a trace.’

He looked so unhappy that Rosemary leaned forward, and stroked the top of his drooping head with one shy finger.

‘Poor Carbonel!’ she said softly. ‘But what did you do?’

‘Do? What could I do? If any ordinary cat had disappeared, I could have alerted every animal in the kingdom: but not for Calidor, Prince of the royal blood. How could I tell the world that he is no longer worthy to be their King? Before the news becomes public property I hope to find him, and perhaps persuade him to a change of heart. So far only Blandamour, his poor mother, and my faithful Councillor Marbeck know what has happened.’

‘Did you never find any trace of him?’ asked John.

Carbonel raised his head wearily.

‘After searching high and low I tracked him down at last to Fairfax Market. He seems to have taken up with two old women I’ve crossed claws with before, though how I don’t remember. I felt a tingling in my paws the minute I set eyes on them.’

‘Do they live in a funny little house squashed in between two new blocks of offices?’ asked John suddenly. At the same time he looked at Rosemary with lifted eyebrows. She nodded in return.

‘They do,’ said Carbonel. ‘For some reason my son Calidor has joined them, but for no good purpose I am afraid. Once, I got my head round the door and heard them talking for a little, before it was slammed on my whiskers; but I could smell it, the smell of wickedness! Ever since, I have forgotten my pride, and called to him from time to time, pleading. I, Carbonel, pleading! But he gave no answer. I was in despair … and then I thought I recognized you at the bus stop.’

‘Your son, Calidor,’ asked John. ‘Is he a black cat with white paws?’

‘He is,’ said Carbonel.

‘Then I shouldn’t think there’s much doubt,’ went on John, turning to Rosemary. ‘Calidor must be Crumpet!’

‘Cr-r-r-umpet!’ spat Carbonel, with ears flattened once more, and bristling back. ‘They dare to call a cat of the royal blood by such a name! Cr-r-r-umpet indeed!’

‘I don’t suppose they know he’s royal,’ said Rosemary. ‘And he does toast himself in front of the fire. We saw him.’

‘You saw him?’ exclaimed Carbonel.

Rosemary nodded.‘This afternoon. We were having tea there, with Mrs Cantrip and Miss Dibdin. I think we heard you calling,’ she went on. She remembered how Crumpet had dived for cover under the armchair when he heard the strange, bubbling cat cry.

‘You mean you can come and go in the little house that smells of wickedness?’

‘Yes, I suppose so,’ said Rosemary doubtfully. ‘There was rather a funny smell. I thought it was just the flower water needed changing.’

‘Then you and John are the only ones who can help,’ said Carbonel. ‘But there,’ he went on reproachfully. ‘Now you are going away and leaving me in the lurch. I heard you talking about it on the way from the bus.’

‘We aren’t leaving anyone in the lurch!’ said John indignantly. ‘Rosie and I are going to stay with my uncle at Highdown. It was arranged ages ago. Miss Dibdin, that’s the short fat one, is going there as well, and she’s taking Crump … I mean Calidor with her.’

‘She is? And you will be there too?’ said Carbonel, leaping to his feet. ‘Then everything’s settled!’ His splendid white whiskers, which had been drooping unhappily, suddenly rose, as the spokes rise when you put up your umbrella.

‘Wait a minute!’ said John. ‘What’s settled?’

Carbonel went on as though he had not heard.

‘You realize that I have important affairs of state to attend to, and that I can’t go on gallivanting off for days on end. I’ve already been away too long. Besides, I’m getting old and stiff in the joints. But now that you are taking over …’

‘Taking over?’ said Rosemary. ‘I don’t think …’

But Carbonel swept on.‘I shall allow you twenty-four hours to make contact with Calidor and persuade him to return. Then I shall visit you at Highdown, so that you can report progress.’ He held up a restraining paw as John tried to interrupt again. ‘Keep the Golden Gew-Gaw, as you call it, within sight or feel. Inthe wrong hands, someone who does not know its powers, it might be a deadly danger, and besides …’

‘Oh do listen!’ said John in an exasperated voice. ‘What on earth do you expect us to do? And this magic ring, is it …?’

He broke off as the kitchen door opened behind them. Both John and Rosemary turned round. It was Mrs Featherstone.

‘Hallo, dears!’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you come back. Oh, Rosie, your coat just thrown on the floor! How many times have I told you to hang up your things when you come in. And one of the saucers from the best tea-set on the floor too. What on earth are you both doing waving your hands inthe air?’ She laughed, and John and Rosemary hurriedly disengaged their fingers. It was John who slipped the ring in his pocket this time.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ said Rosemary. ‘About the coat and the saucer, but you see …’ She turned. Carbonel was nowhere to be seen. She picked up her coat from the floor. There were only a few black hairs clinging to its surface to show where he had been sitting, and the gentle swinging of thecasement window to show how he had gone.

‘All right, never mind. But do try to remember, dear,’ said her mother. ‘You might lay the table for supper, will you? Fish fingers and jam tart to follow. I’ll be back in a minute.’ She closed the door behind her.

Rosemary looked at John. His face was red, and he began slapping knives and forks on the table in a cross sort of way.

‘What’s the matter?’ she asked.

‘Matter?’ exploded John. ‘I’m blowed if I’m going to be bossed about by a mere cat!’

‘He isn’t “mere”,’ said Rosemary indignantly. ‘He’s Carbonel.’

‘I don’t care who he is!’ said John. ‘If he thinks we’re going to spend all our time at Highdown looking for his wretched Calidor, he’s got another think coming!’

‘But if he wants us to help him it would be beastly not to try!’ said Rosemary hotly.

‘My good girl,’ snapped John. ‘What on earth can we possibly do, even if we find his wretched Calidor? Nothing, except tell him to be a good pussy and go home to mummy and daddy. Not me!’

‘If only Carbonel had explained a bit more before we were interrupted,’ went on Rosemary unhappily. ‘And what about the Golden Gew-Gaw? He said if it got into the wrong hands it might be a “deadly danger”, and we’ve no idea how it works.’

John took the ring from his pocket, and held it gingerly in the hollow of his palm, where the red stone glowed like a living coal.

‘By the barmy way you went on when you put it on at the bus stop, I can believe him!’ he said. ‘And how do you know thatwe aren’t “the wrong hands”? We haven’t the faintest idea what it does.’

‘Except it lets us hear Carbonel when he talks,’ said Rosemary obstinately. She frowned, and then said urgently, ‘John, I’ve just thought of something! Miss Dibdin’s parcel — do you think that was it?’

‘Which was what?’ asked John impatiently.

‘The purple cracker! Do you think that could possibly have been the mysterious parcel? I told you it was lying loose on top of the pink crackers as though it didn’t belong. Well, whoever put it there must have thought that she would open the box and find it!’

‘You mean the queer old man? Good grief! I wonder if you’re right?’

‘Don’t you remember, Miss Dibdin said what a long time he was at the back of the shop doing up the parcel?’ went on Rosemary.

‘And that was why he cackled fit to “do himself a mischief”,’ went on John. ‘When he said it would reach Fairfax Market at the very same time that Miss Dibdin did. She was carrying it home herself after all, and she didn’t know!’ He exploded with laughter, but Rosemary was frowning.

‘But how could it be a Do-It-Yourself Kit?’ she said. ‘Do what yourself?’

‘Why, magic of course! That must be what her hobby was! A witch’s hat and a magic ring would be …’ He broke off when he found he was talking to empty air. Rosemary had rushed out into the passage where she had obediently hung up her coat. Her muffled voice came from outside.

‘I’m sure it’s here somewhere. I shoved it in my coat pocket when the bus came.’

She returned with a handful of crumpled paper, which was all that was left of the purple cracker. Very carefully she smoothed it out among the supper knives and forks. The paper hat was there. She gave a sigh of relief. It had been screwed into a ball, but was still recognizable.

‘And we’ve got the ring,’ said John. ‘I suppose we’d better take them both to Fairfax Market tomorrow, and explain to Miss Dibdin what happened. But wait a minute …’ He stopped, and then went on with a frown: ‘Didn’t Miss Dibdin say something about the instructions how to use the things being in the parcel too?’

Rosemary went hurriedly through every inch of the crumpled paper again.‘Well, I can’t see anything that looks like instructions here,’ she said.

‘Crikey! What do we do now?’ said John. ‘I suppose the whole lot is useless, the ring and the hat, without knowing how to use them. I don’t much like the idea of telling Miss Dibdin what’s happened, even if it wasn’t our fault.’

‘Anyway, we can’t go to Fairfax Market tomorrow,’ said Rosemary. ‘Don’t you remember? Dad is taking us to the airport to watch the aeroplanes.’

‘Ooh, yes, we don’t want to miss that,’ said John. ‘I tell you what. Supposing we keep everything absolutely safe until we get to Highdown. It’s such a little place, we are sure to bump into Miss Dibdin some time or other. She may not want callers, but I bet she’ll be glad to see us if we’ve got the Golden Gew-Gaw, even if we have gone and lost the directions. I’ll put the ring, and the witch’s hat, rolled up small, as it was inside the purple cracker, in my box for Special Things.’

As he spoke he pulled a flat tin box from his pocket which had once held his father’s tobacco. Inside were some foreign stamps, a Turkish coin and an owl pellet. He put the ring and the screwed-up paper hat carefully inside, replaced the lid, and returned the box to his pocket.

‘Carbonel said: “Keep the ring always within sight or feel.” Well it’ll be within feel all right.’ He patted the bulge the box made in the pocket of his jeans, so that it gave a hollow rattle. ‘Agreed?’ he said.

Rosemary nodded.‘And just suppose we do meet Crumpet …?’

‘Wait till we do,’ said John. ‘And then … well, we’ll just see what happens.’

As things turned out, quite a lot happened.

5. Highdown

SEVERAL days later Rosemary wrote:

Dear Mum

I felt a bit funny when I saw the car drive away without me, but it’s all right now. I love Highdown. I like Uncle Zack. He is adopting me as a niece for the holidays. Mother Boddles — that’s what John calls Mrs Bodkin, who is the housekeeper — is a bit grumpy because of the spring-cleaning. I mean, she can’t do it yet because of John and me, but Uncle Zack says she has a layer of niceness inside like a jam sandwich and to take no notice. Please send my old coat because my new one is much too hot. I must stop now because John and I are going round the village giving out leaflets about a sale in the antique shop on Saturday with refreshments.

With love from

ROSIE

PS. I know what a Cromwellian table looks like… it has bulgy legs.

As Rosemary slid the letter into an envelope, John burst into the room.

‘What an age you’ve been over that old letter! Do buck up. Oh, and send my love to your Mum.’

‘Too late,’ said Rosemary. ‘I’ve just licked it up. I wonder why they don’t make envelope gum taste nice. They might have different flavours, like orange and peppermint.’

‘And chocolate-flavoured stamps,’ said John. ‘But for goodness’ sake put a spurt on. It’s so late I’ve asked Mother Boddles if she will make us some sandwiches, so that we shan’t have to waste time coming home in the middle of the leaflet business. Uncle Zack said I could.’

Rosemary had been writing with the pad on her knee sitting on the end of her bed, which is not the best way to write a letter; but she loved her tiny bedroom under the eaves.

Roundels, Uncle Zack’s house, stood on the outskirts of the village, a little way back from the road. A notice which said ‘Antiques’, on each of the gateposts of the semi-circular drive, was the only sign that there was a shop behind the bow windows of the two front rooms which opened off the stone-flagged hall.The living part of the house was at the back, overlooking the rambling garden.

‘Oh, buck up!’ said John impatiently, as Rosemary wrote the address. She slid off the patchwork quilt which covered the bed, and they ran down the two flights of stairs that led to the kitchen.

Mrs Bodkin was sitting at the well-scrubbed kitchen table, polishing silver, and singing in a tuneless way something that Rosemary thought she recognized as a hymn. She was an immensely fat person, who for all her size was surprisingly light on her small feet.

‘There’s your sandwiches,’ she said, nodding her head sideways in the direction of the two bulging paper bags at the end of the table, without looking up from her polishing. ‘Giving your orders like a young lord! I don’t know. I’ve put in a couple of rock cakes each, and there’s milk in the medicine bottle. Oh, and a bit of chocolate. And mind you don’t get into mischief.’

‘Thank you,’ said John. ‘I don’t know how long it will take us. The leaflet business I mean. We might not be back in time for tea.’

‘Then you won’t get none,’ replied Mrs Bodkin tartly. ‘Please yourselves.’

She looked up from her work for the first time, and her frowning face creased into a quick smile.‘Get along with you! Do you think I wasn’t a nipper once myself? A bit of a limb I was too. I thought maybe you’d want to skip your tea, that’s why I put in the rock cakes. They’re the ones you won’t be eating if you’re not back in time.’

Rosemary was looking at Mrs Bodkin doubtfully.

‘Well, what are you staring at? You’ll know me next time!’

‘I was trying to imagine …’ began Rosemary.

‘Me as a nipper?’ said Mrs Bodkin. ‘Skinny I was, believe it or not, with two pigtails. Well, you’d best be getting along, instead of hindering.’

‘All right,’ said John. ‘And thank you for the rock cakes.’

‘And the chocolate and everything,’ added Rosemary.

Mrs Bodkin gave her sudden smile and a flip of the duster in dismissal, and turned to her polishing and hymn singing. John and Rosemary went to collect the leaflets from Uncle Zack.

He was tall and thin, as John had described, dressed in the most shapeless tweeds that Rosemary had ever seen. He was in one of the showrooms, sitting in front of a small desk, pulling out each of the drawers and sliding it back again.

‘Uncle Zack …’ began John, but his uncle held up a warning hand.

‘Sh!’ he said. ‘Listen!’ and slid the top drawer in and out again.

‘I can’t hear anything,’ said John after a pause.

‘Neither can I,’ said Rosemary.

‘That’s the point!’ said Uncle Zack triumphantly. ‘The drawers move like silk, without a sound! Made by a top-notch craftsman!’ He patted the rosewood surface of the desk affectionately, as though it was a favourite horse or a dog. ‘Isn’t she a beauty? But of course, you want the leaflets. They’re in a satchel on the table in the sitting-room.’

‘On the Cromwellian table?’ asked Rosemary.

Uncle Zack’s large mouth widened still further in a smile.

‘Good girl, you’re learning!’ he said. ‘Have you got plenty of sandwiches? A leaflet through every letterbox, mind, and don’t forget Tucket Towers. I don’t suppose Mrs Witherspoon will spend much, but you never know. She’s a strange old thing. Pedals about on a tricycle now she’s sold her car.’

‘Where is Tucket Towers?’ asked John.

‘Go down Sheepshank Lane. That’s the road that leads from the other side of the Market Place, then over the crossroads and the old railway bridge, and you’ll see the tower sticking up behind a clump of trees. Old Colonel Witherspoon built it fifty years ago, to be near the railway station. And now, of course, the station is closed. But that’s life. Now away with you, and thank you very much.’

John and Rosemary closed the front door behind them and started up the road in thoughtful silence.

‘It’s a funny thing,’ said John. ‘I’d forgotten about Miss Dibdin, and the purple cracker and everything, ever since we came to Highdown, until Uncle Zack mentioned the old railway station.’

‘So had I,’ said Rosemary. ‘Have you got the ring safely?’

John patted his pocket, and the ring made a dull rattling sound inside the tin.

‘Do you remember Carbonel said he would give us twenty-four hours to get in touch with Calidor before he came to Highdown? Well, we’ve been here for several days and he hasn’t turned up. I wonder why?’ Rosemary said thoughtfully. ‘It’s not like him not to keep his word.’

‘Just as well he hasn’t,’ said John. ‘We haven’t met Miss Dibdin, or seen so much as a whisker of Calidor. I tell you what. When we’ve finished delivering leaflets, let’s go and have a peek at the old railway station.’

They pushed leaflets through every letterbox they could find on the way to the village, each of them going to alternate houses.

‘I’m ringing all the bells, and knocking all the knockers as well, to make sure everyone notices!’ shouted John, as they passed one another, shuttling backwards and forwards.

‘So am I!’ Rosemary called over her shoulder. ‘I like to hear what sort of doorbell each house has. Some go “ping”, some go “ping-pong”, and some just “tinkle”.’

‘And some go “squawk”!’ shouted John as he passed her again.

When they reached the Market Square they handed in a leaflet over every counter. Rosemary liked shops. By the time they had worked their way round they were getting rather tired, and very hungry.

‘I’m simply starving,’ said John. He looked at the rows of cars parked in the Square. ‘But we can’t eat our sandwiches here. Let’s go down Sheepshanks Lane and find somewhere there. We can go on to Tucket Towers afterwards.’

After running beside the road for some way down Sheepshanks Lane, the footpath was swallowed up by a grassy verge.

‘Let’s stop here,’ said Rosemary. ‘Under that bit of hedge with the catkins … What are you staring at?’ she asked.

‘That great pile of chunky earth. It must have come out of a huge great hole. I expect they are mending the road. Let’s go and see.’

Just as Rosemary liked shops, John liked holes, so they went to inspect it. A little way away was one of those cheerful-looking stripy tents, put up by men who mend roads.

‘I say, what a smashing hole!’ said John, as they looked down into its murky depths. They neither of them noticed the road-man come out of the tent and walk towards them.

‘Oy!’ he shouted. ‘Now then you two! How long ’ave you been messing about ’ere?’

‘We aren’t messing. Only looking,’ said John.

‘Well, what have you done with my cones?’

‘Cones?’ said John. ‘Do you mean those red and white pointed things for warning people the road is up?’ The man nodded.

‘We haven’t done anything with them.’

‘Six there were this morning. I put them there myself. And I’m blowed if someone didn’t nick the lot while I was having my cuppa back there.’ He pointed with a grimy thumb to the little tent. ‘About ten o’clock it must have been, and me not away above five minutes.’

‘Well, it wasn’t us!’ said John indignantly.

‘We’ve only just come,’ went on Rosemary. ‘And whatever should we want the cones for, anyway?’

‘You never know with kids,’ said the man darkly.

‘Well, you can see we haven’t got them,’ said John. ‘They aren’t the sort of thing you can put in your pocket.’

‘All right, all right, I believe you,’ said the man reluctantly. ‘But there’s some as ’ld pinch their grannie’s back hair, given half a chance … ’Allo, ’allo! It’s coming on to rain! Looks like being heavy. You’d best run for it. Turn left there at the crossroads and there’sa shed you can shelter in before you come to the old railway station.’

They thanked him and said they hoped he would find his missing cones, and turned to go; but not before Rosemary had pressed a leaflet into his hand. They left him looking at it in a puzzled way.

‘Come on!’ said John, and broke into a jog-trot, for it was beginning to rain quite hard; but of course they did not stop at the shed. They ran straight on till they came to the railway station.

It stood by itself, with no houses in sight. The entrance was locked, so they crawled through a hole in the hedge at one side and climbed up on to the deserted platform.

‘Food first, explore later,’ said John, and Rosemary agreed.

They sat down on a rickety old seat which was propped against a wall beneath a torn and mildewed poster, urging them to‘Come to Sunny Southport’.

‘Good old Mother Boddles!’ said John as he unpacked the sandwiches. ‘Sardine and hard-boiled egg. She isn’t so bad really.’

At first they were too busy eating to talk, but they looked about them as they munched. The railway lines had been taken up. Only two long parallel smudges of darker green on the weedy track, stretching away into the distance in both directions, showed where they had once been. The rain pattered steadily on the glass roof above them, and dripped through a few broken panes on the discoloured platform below. Little pillows of green moss bulged here and there between the boards where once the impatient feet of passengers had paced up and down. A clump of nettles grew by the seat on which they were sitting.

‘I think it’s the most alone place I’ve ever been in,’ said Rosemary. ‘It’s a bit creepy,’ she added, looking at the fields, now misty with rain, on the other side of what had been the railway line.

‘I suppose it’s because you expect stations to be busy,’ said John with his mouth full of sandwich. He looked at the door leading to the small booking hall beside him. It hung awkwardly on a single hinge.

‘That’s queer. Two empty milk bottles by the door!’

‘What’s so funny about that?’ said Rosemary. ‘I expect a porter left them behind ages ago and nobody bothered to collect them.’

John got up from the bench and picked up one of the bottles. There was a dribble of milk at the bottom. He put his nose to the neck and sniffed.

‘If they’d been left ages ago the milk would be all mouldy. It doesn’t even smell sour! It looks as though someone has been here not so long ago. I’m going to explore.’

Rosemary didn’t much want to be left by herself on the deserted platform, so she went with him.

‘I expect it was somebody like us, just sheltering,’ she said, but she looked uneasily over her shoulder as she followed him into the booking hall. The door of the Station Master’s office on the left was locked. There was a shutter over the little window where tickets had once been sold, but the waiting-room opposite was open. There was nothing there but dust and cobwebs, and a scattering of soot on the floor round the old-fashioned fireplace.

‘There was another door, outside, further up the platform,’ said John. ‘Let’s have a look at that.’

6. Miss Dibdin Makes Do

JOHN led the way, with Rosemary close behind. LADIES’ WAITING ROOM was written in fat, frosted letters on the glass which filled the upper half of the door.

‘I don’t suppose anyone …’ he began, as he pushed the door open. Then he stopped.

The remains of a small fire were burning in the grate and a large, red fire-bucket stood in the hearth, with a wooden spoon resting across the top. A battered bench, like the one on the platform, was drawn up to the fireplace. An attempt had been made to sweep the dusty floor, and in a corner someone had propped a broom. It was not the usual household kind, but the sort that gardeners use, with a bunch of twigs tied to one end, instead of bristles.

‘I say!’ said John. ‘Look over there!’ Rosemary looked.

‘The road-man’s cones, all six of them, and somebody’s painted one of them black!’

They stood in a row, with an open tin in front with‘Perkin’s Ebony Gloss’ printed in large letters on the label.

‘Well, whoever did it isn’t very good at painting,’ said John. ‘Just look at the splodges all over the floor. But who can have done it, and whatever for?’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ said Rosemary. She walked over to the corner, picked up the broom, and began to examine the narrow band that secured the twigs to the handle. ‘I believe I know who did it, but not why.’

‘Oh, lay off it, Rosie! How could you know?’ said John.

‘Well, I do, so there!’ said Rosemary. ‘The twigs are tied on with a piece of plastic ribbon with printing on it.’

‘So what!’ said John scornfully.

‘You needn’t be so squashing,’ said Rosemary. ‘The printing says “NOSTRADAMUS LTD. Fancy Goods”. The same as the tape that tied up Miss Dibdin’s box of crackers for the party. Now do you understand?’

‘You mean, Miss Dibdin …?’

Rosemary interrupted.‘When I went into her bedroom that evening there was a stick just like this one, leaning against the mantelpiece, and there was a pile of twigs on the hearthrug. She must have tied them on with the tape from the parcel, to make the broom.’

‘Then it must have been Miss Dibdin who pinched the road-man’s cones as well!’ said John. ‘Good heavens!’ He knelt, and touched the cone that had been painted black. ‘And the paint’s still wet, so she can’t have been gone very long.’

‘And now,’ said an acid voice from the doorway, ‘she’s come back.’

John and Rosemary whipped round. Miss Dibdin, with Crumpet peering round her ankles, was standing in the opening. There was a long uncomfortable pause. Miss Dibdin stood tapping one foot on the floor. Her grey hair straggled in wet rats’ tails from a scarlet headscarf. Rain trickled from the long folds of her black mackintosh, and even dripped from the end of her nose, which looked even more beaky than ever. Crumpet stalked towards the fireplace, shaking each wet paw in turn as he went.

Miss Dibdin broke the uneasy silence.

‘What are you doing here?’ she snapped. ‘Snooping and interfering!’

‘We didn’t mean to snoop,’ said John.

‘We only came to the station to shelter from the rain,’ went on Rosemary. There was another pause, at the end of which Miss Dibdin took a deep breath, as though she had made up her mind about something.

‘Well,’ she began, almost amiably. ‘Since you’ve stumbled on my secret, you had better sit down, and we can have a little chat. But first you must promise to tell nobody about it. Not a human soul!’

‘Promise!’ said John. ‘Not a human soul!’

‘Promise!’ said Rosemary.

Miss Dibdin motioned them to the bench, and they perched themselves uneasily on the edge.

‘First of all we must make up the fire for Crumpet. He wants to dry his wet paws, don’t you, my pussididdlums!’ she cooed. ‘Such a wet afternoon.’ She added a few sticks to the smouldering embers, and coaxed them into life, before seating herself on a broken packing case. Crumpet sat downby the hearth and began to lick his paws, from time to time flashing a quick, green glance at John and Rosemary.

‘Well,’ said Miss Dibdin at last. ‘What do you think of my little den, dears? Cosy, isn’t it?’

Rosemary looked round, and thought that‘cosy’ was one thing it was not.

‘You see,’ said Miss Dibdin, ‘I have taken rooms at Tucket Towers. So very kind of Mrs Witherspoon. I think she likes the company, and we have both started on the same … hobby. Quite rivals we are becoming! So of course I wanted somewhere private where I could get on with things. Make messes with no one interfering, you know. After all, you can’t boil a cauldron in a bed-sitting-room, can you?’ She waved airily at the fire bucket which stood in the hearth, its red sides smudged with soot.

‘Do you mean youcook things in the fire-bucket?’ asked John.

Miss Dibdin nodded.‘A sort of cooking, you might call it,’ she replied, pushing out her underlip. ‘You can imagine how pleased I was when I discovered this place that nobody seems to want! That was a couple of weeks ago, when I came to Highdown for the day to look round. There’s even a short cut to the station, through the fields from Tucket Towers. I didn’t tell Katie about it, at first. She’s so inclined to interfere.’

‘I remember you telling Mrs Cantrip you were going to be met by a friend at Highdown Station,’ said John.

Miss Dibdin smothered a laugh behind her hand.

‘That was rather naughty of me!’ she said coyly. ‘But I didn’t say what kind, did I? It was a furry, four-footed friend. A beautiful smooth-haired pussy! It belongs to Mrs Witherspoon. She told me it seemed to take a fancy to her, just as Crumpet did to me. Her cat met her first when she was coming home from church one Sunday morning. What with that, and the fact that it was a beautiful smoky grey, just the colour of the suit the vicar always wears, she called it Mattins. Mattins and Crumpet aresuch friends! Aren’t you, my precious?’

Crumpet, now warm and dry once more, was purring furiously as Miss Dibdin rubbed him behind his ears.

‘You see, at first Mrs Witherspoon wanted time to decide whether to take me in, not being used to letting rooms, and that was to be the sign. If, when I arrived at Highdown I found Mattins sitting in the Ladies’ Waiting Room, it would mean she would have me. And he was. So fortunate! But you remember that parcel I was expecting, with the Do-It-Yourself Kit? It never came, after all. I can’t think what went wrong!’

Rosemary flashed a look at John and began uncomfortably:‘Miss Dibdin …’

But Miss Dibdin snapped:‘Don’t interrupt! I am telling you! Without it I am just having to make do. Why, I had to come to Highdown by bus and taxi, andcarry my broom, instead of …’ She looked up, and broke off as she saw the children’s fascinated gaze.

The windows of the little room were so clouded with dirt that not much light filtered through. The firelight flickered on her frowning face.

‘Well, anyway, here I am,’ she ended lamely. ‘But it is surprising the number of ways it is possible to make the best of things.’ She nodded towards the cones standing on the newspaper.

‘Did you really take them from the hole in the road?’ asked John. ‘The cones, I mean.’

Miss Dibdin shuffled her feet in their sensible flat-heeled shoes.

‘Well, I’ve just been telling you, I have to make do,’ she said irritably. ‘They were the right shape, though perhaps they aren’t very comfortable. The human head is oval, and the hollow inside the cones is round. I know, because I tried one on before I, er, borrowed them. The colour is soon put right. Oh, I shall put them all back when Katie sends my parcel on. I shan’t need them when it arrives. I told her where I was staying in the end. Tucket Towers sounds such a respectable address, don’t you think? I’m sure the parcel will come at last, and when it does,when it does …!’ She threw back her head and laughed shrilly with wide-flung arms. ‘There will benothing I cannot have andnothing I cannot do!’

‘But do you mean you are going to wear that cone thing on your head, like a witch’s hat?’ said John.

Miss Dibdin clapped her hand over her mouth.‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘I’ve said too much!’

‘Then your hobby really is magic?’ said Rosemary.

Miss Dibdin nodded slowly.‘If you’ve guessed so much it’s no use pretending. But don’t forget, you promised not to tell!’ she added quickly.

‘Is there a witch’s hat in this — this parcel you’re expecting?’ asked John.

Again Miss Dibdin nodded, and he exchanged a quick glance with Rosemary. Miss Dibdin’s eyes glittered strangely in the firelight, as she stared into the dancing flames. Her voice dropped to a whisper, almost as though she was talking to herself.

‘And that’s not all,’ she muttered. ‘There is something else in the parcel besides the hat. Something more precious than the Bank of England. Something that would give me power; such power that …’

‘But Miss Dibdin,’ began Rosemary. ‘Dolisten! When I went up to your room in Fairfax Market … Ow!’ she went on, looking reproachfully at John who had dug his elbow sharply into her ribs. ‘That hurt!’

‘Shut up!’ he whispered.

Miss Dibdin didn’t seem to have noticed. She sat gazing into the fire, wrapped in her own thoughts, and mumbling to herself. But Crumpet was watching, with eyes that never wavered. John cleared his throat loudly, and Miss Dibdin roused herself.

‘But what do you wantsix witches’ hats for?’ he asked.

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment, and then she said sulkily:‘I only meant to take one at first. Then when I found it didn’t fit very well, I thought it might blow off when I was flying high. So I took the others as spares.’

‘You mean when you fly on your broomstick?’ said Rosemary. ‘Can you fly very high?’

‘I can’t fly at all yet. Didn’t I tell you I had to come to Highdown by bus?’ said Miss Dibdin crossly. ‘But I shall! Make no mistake! When my parcel comes … What is it, John?’ she broke off irritably. He had made several attempts to say something.

‘But Miss Dibdin, that hole in the road where you pinched the cones. Aren’t you afraid someone will fall into it if there is nothing there to warn them?’

Miss Dibdin flushed with anger.‘Pinched them, did you say?Pinched them? I should not dream of doing anything so vulgar!Borrowed, you mean. I told you, I shall put them back when my parcel comes. Besides,’ she went on sulkily, ‘I don’t believe in mollycoddling. People should look where they’re going!’

‘But isn’t stealing the cones breaking the law?’ persisted John.

‘Talking of breaking the law,’ said Miss Dibdin, drawing herself up, ‘what about you, pray?’

‘Me?’ said John in surprise. ‘Whatever do you mean?’

‘Well, what are you, aboy, doing in aLadies’ Waiting Room? Go along with you, shoo! Shoo!’

She advanced on John, flapping her black mackintosh at him, and shushed him out of the door. Rosemary was only too glad to sidle out after him. A shrill voice followed them as they scuttled down the platform. They paused for a moment to listen, before crawling through the hole in the hedge.

‘Don’t forget!’ called Miss Dibdin. ‘You promised not to tell! Not a human soul!’

7. The Scrabbles

‘WHEW!’ said John when they had scrambled out on to the road side of the hedge. ‘So Miss Dibdin really does want to be a witch!’

‘All the same,’ said Rosemary, as she picked bits of twig out of her hair, ‘we ought to have told her about the purple cracker. Why did you make me shut up?’

‘Oh grow up, Rosie!’ said John. ‘Do you really think that if that queer old thing got hold of the Golden Gew-Gaw it would be in “the right hands”? I’m sure it was the ring she meant when she talked about something that would give her all that power.’

‘ “More precious than the Bank of England”?’ went on Rosemary. ‘I suppose you’re right. What’s the matter?’

John had suddenly clapped his hand to his forehead.‘We’ve left the satchel with the leaflets behind — on the bench where we began to have lunch.And the rest of the sandwiches. We’d only eaten half of them. We shall have to go back and get them.’

‘Must we?’ said Rosemary, remembering how very strange Miss Dibdin had been.

‘We must,’ said John. ‘I’ll go by myself if you’re scared.’

‘If you’re going, of course I’m coming too,’ said Rosemary.

John was peering cautiously over the hedge.‘Hold on a minute … I think it’s all right! Yes, look over there!’

Rosemary looked.

It had stopped raining, and a shaft of pale, watery sunshine had broken through the clouds. Pinpricks of light sparkled on the raindrops still hanging from the bare hawthorn hedge. Two fields distant, on the other side of the railway, a figure in a flapping black mackintosh was bobbing its way through the wet grass.

‘Miss Dibdin,’ said Rosemary. ‘She must be going back to Tucket Towers by that short cut she told us about.’

‘You can see the tower sticking up behind that clump of trees,’ said John.

The path sloped downhill, and they watched Miss Dibdin’s dumpy figure grow smaller and smaller, until she seemed to merge into the mist, which still lay on the low ground. Finally, she disappeared among the dark shadows of the trees.

‘Come on!’ said John. ‘We don’t want to be caught in the station if she decides to come back again.’

They wriggled their way once more through the hole in the hedge, and hurried up the ramp which led to the platform. Then they stopped. Sitting on the bench on which they had eaten the sandwiches, licking his paws, was Crumpet.

‘Quick!’ whispered Rosemary. ‘The Golden Gew-Gaw! Let’s see if he will talk to us. You promised!’

John nodded, and felt in his pocket for the tin of Special Things. Then, each with a finger looped through the golden band, they advanced on tip-toe.

‘Hallo, Calidor!’ said John suddenly.

The cat started, turning quickly, and looked furtively to left and right, muttering to himself:‘No tact, humans haven’t. How in the world do they know what my real name is? Crumpet I’m called hereabouts.’

He looked suspiciously up at the children, with flattened ears.

‘We know quite a lot about you,’ said Rosemary. ‘About Carbonel, and you not caring a herring bone who becomes King of the Cats after him. But we’ll call you Crumpet if you’d rather.’

The cat rose slowly, his legs with their white paws splayed, so that he could balance on the slats of the station seat. He stared up at them with wide green eyes.

‘Who are you?’ he asked at last. ‘And how is it you can hear me talk? Even She can’t do that.’ He nodded towards the Ladies’ Waiting Room.

Once again John nudged Rosemary as she was about to speak.

‘Oh, we just — happen to be able to hear — a lot of things,’ he said airily.

Crumpet was squinting up at them now through half-closed eyes.

‘Fairfax Market!’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s where I’ve seen you before.’

Rosemary nodded.‘We met Carbonel on the way home afterwards,’ she said. ‘We told him we were going to Highdown, and that Miss Dibdin was bringing you here too.’

‘You told him that?’ said Crumpet angrily. ‘Just when I thought I’d escaped! It’s “Calidor, do this”, and “Calidor, do that”, “Royal cats do this”, and “Royal cats don’t do the other”, morning, noon and night. Sick of it, I am! It’s not as though I am a kitten any longer. Why, I’m not even allowed to choose my own friends!’

‘Carbonel did say something about you getting into bad company,’ began John.

‘Bad company?’ interrupted Calidor. ‘Is that what he calls her? The prettiest little tabby that ever lapped a saucer! And as nice manners as any stuck-up royal kitten, and honest too. None of your sly-paws like the other one they’ve planned I shall marry.’

‘But why don’t you want anyone to know your real name?’ asked John.

‘For two reasons,’ replied Crumpet. ‘This is not my father Carbonel’s kingdom. It is enemy country. It belongs to Grisana, Queen of the Broomhurst cats.’

‘But I don’t understand,’ said Rosemary. ‘Why should Grisana mind you being here?’

‘Because she hates me for refusing to marry her daughter, Melissa,’ said Crumpet.

‘The one you meant by “sly-paws”?’ asked Rosemary.

Calidor nodded.‘It was all arranged when we were kittens. At first my parents thought that if my sister Pergamond were to marry Grisana’s son Gracilis, it might end the feud between Broomhurst and Fallowhithe cats. But they decided he was too feeble; like his father King Castrum, to be of any importance. Instead they approached Grisana, and it was arranged that when we were both grown up I should marry her daughter Melissa. But the only cat I mean to marry is my one and only dear little Dumpsie! Turned spiteful, Grisana has, because of it. Says I’ve insulted the royal house of Castrum. If she finds out I am in her kingdom, she’d do anything to get her own back. As Crumpet, she need never know who I am.’

‘But if you’re in danger here, why do you stay?’ said Rosemary.

‘Come closer, and I’ll tell you,’ said Crumpet. He looked cautiously round while John and Rosemary knelt down beside the seat. Then he lifted his chin and said proudly: ‘I want to make my own way. Show the world I can stand on my own paws. Not because I’m Carbonel’s son and a royal cat,but because I’mme, Calidor or Crumpet. Call me what you like. I have decided to become a witch’s cat.’ He dropped his voice again. ‘She is learning to be a witch.’ He nodded sideways towards the Ladies’ Waiting Room. ‘So we can both learn together.’

‘I don’t think I should like to belong to Miss Dibdin,’ said Rosemary.

‘Who said anything about “belonging”?’ replied Calidor indignantly. ‘Mattins and I have our plans, I tell you. He has decided to be witch’s cat to the other one at Tucket Towers. He knows nothing of my royal blood, of course. But keep out of this, Hearing Humans, for your own good! I must go. I have important things to see to.’

As he spoke, Calidor jumped down from the seat, slipped over the edge of the platform and crossed the weedy track below. When he reached the tangle of grass and cow-parsley the other side, he turned.

‘Keep out of this!’ he called, and with a flick of his tail he disappeared. Without thinking, Rosemary slipped the ring into her pocket. When they could no longer follow Calidor’s progress through the field by the waving of the long grass, John said crossly: ‘What cheek, telling us what we ought to do! He’s as bad as Carbonel!’

As he spoke, there was a clatter behind them. They turned quickly. Someone or something had upset the two milk bottles.

‘Look!’ said John. ‘That grey cat streaking down the platform!’

‘It must be Mattins!’ said Rosemary.

‘Hi, Mattins!’ called John. ‘Mattins!’ But either the grey cat did not hear, or didn’t want to hear. He disappeared round the corner of the station.

‘Oh well,’ said John. ‘I suppose we ought to go and take that leaflet to Tucket Towers.’

‘Do we have to?’ said Rosemary uneasily. ‘I don’t think I want to meet this Mrs Witherspoon much. One witch is quite enough for today!’

‘I know,’ said John. ‘But we promised Uncle Zack we would. We could go by Miss Dibdin’s short cut.’

‘Don’t let’s!’ said Rosemary. ‘We might meet her coming back.’

‘All right,’ said John. ‘I shouldn’t much like that either. We can go by the road, drop the leaflet through the letterbox, and run.’

They set off the way they had come, eating the remains of the sandwiches and the rock cakes as they went. When they reached the crossroads, the road-man had gone home to his tea. Four lamps, already lit, stood at the corners of the hole. Instead of taking the road back to the village they turned to the left towards Tucket Towers and crossed the bridge that spanned the old railway line.

The brief burst of sunshine was gone. The clouds were even darker than before. A chill little breeze had sprung up, and Rosemary pushed her cold hands deep into her pockets. The sky was so overcast that a car coming over the hump of the bridge had its lights on. They stood back as it passed.

‘Did you see how it made the cat’s eyes in the road light up?’ said John.

Rosemary nodded, and poked one of the small rubbery squares with the toe of her shoe. The glass‘eyes’ which had shone so brightly as the car approached were dull now, and lifeless.

‘It’s a super idea!’ said John, looking at the row of studs marking the middle of the road stretching ahead of them. ‘I mean having “eyes” back and front to reflect the light when a car comes either way.’

‘Yes, but what for?’ said Rosemary.

‘To show where the middle of the road is when it’s dark, of course,’ said John. ‘Didn’t you know? Really Rosie, you are a prize ass sometimes!’

Rosemary flushed.‘Well anyway, I don’t think they ought to be called cat’s eyes,’ she said. ‘They look more like a row of little crabs squatting down in the road.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said John. ‘Crab’s eyes don’t light up in the dark like cat’s eyes.’

‘But they only light up for a second when a car passes,’ said Rosemary. ‘All the rest of the time they sit in their holes in the roads looking like little square crabs.’

‘Cats!’ said John.

‘Crabs!’ said Rosemary.

‘Cats!’ said John with an infuriating grin, and quite suddenly Rosemary completely lost her temper.

‘Stop it!’ she burst out. ‘Stop it! You’re always being a know-all!’ She stamped her feet in rage. ‘You don’t like Carbonel and Crumpet bossing you. Well, I don’t like you always bossing me! You go on making me shut up when I’m going to say something. I’m quite sore where you keep poking me with your bony great elbow. I say they’re like crabs!’

‘All right. Keep your hair on!’ began John. But Rosemary was thoroughly roused, and she swept on.

‘I wish they’d come alive. I do! I do! I do!’ And each time she said ‘I do’ she stamped her foot. ‘I wish they’d come alive, and that would just show you!’

She stopped suddenly, interrupted by a loud‘pop’! It seemed to come from somewhere between her feet. She stepped back hurriedly.

‘Look at the stud,’ said John. ‘It’s moving!’

Rosemary looked.

It was the one she had poked with her foot. It had come loose from the metal rim which kept it in its place, and was moving up and down, of its own accord, in a jerky sort of way. Then, to Rosemary’s astonishment, it tilted so that the glass ‘eyes’ in front were looking up at her, and at the same time, two rather bandy legs unfolded themselves from the two front corners, waved wildly in the air, scrabbled for a second on the metal rim, then, helped by two more legs growing from the corners at the back, heaved the stud clean out of its square hole. For a minute it stood flexing its legs as though to get the stiffness out of them. Then it scuttled towards Rosemary, bouncing up and down at her feet and making little squeaks of what seemed like pleasure.

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All this took much less time than it takes to describe, and before the little creature had reached her there was a second‘pop’!

‘Crikey, there’s another! And another!And another!’ said John. ‘It’s like a machine-gun going off “Pop! Pop! Pop!” ’ One by one the line of studs running away down the middle of the road rose from their holes and scuttled up to Rosemary, till she was surrounded by a bouncing horde of them: their glass ‘eyes’ glinting back and frontas they all jumped up and down, as a dog does when it is pleased to see you, and all of them twittering, like a cage full of sparrows.

‘You see,’ said Rosemary with lifted chin. ‘It proves I’m right. They aren’t like cats!’

‘Or much like crabs either,’ said John shortly.

‘I don’t see why they have to be like anything,’ went on Rosemary. ‘I think they are just themselves. I shall call them …’ She stopped and looked thoughtfully at the swarming mass at her feet. ‘I know. I shall call them the Scrabbles … because they are a bit like crabs, and they …sort of scrabble with their paws.’

‘All right. Call them what you like,’ said John in an exasperated voice. ‘They hop about so, I can’t count them, but there must be dozens of the things! I suppose you’ve made your point. P’raps they do look more like crabs than cats. But what are we going to do with them now?’

The first flush of Rosemary’s triumph at having proved John wrong for once had begun to ebb away.

‘It’s going to be a bit awkward if they are prancing about all over the place when it gets dark,’ went on John. ‘How are cars to know where the middle of the road is? Can’t you make them go back again?’

‘I suppose I can try,’ replied Rosemary doubtfully. She thought for a moment, and then she said to the Scrabbles in her best polite voice: ‘Of course we are both very pleased to have met you, but hadn’t you better be going home now? I mean back to your holes?’ She made flapping go-away movements with her hands. The Scrabbles stopped bouncing, and shuffled together in a tight little group, and their twittering dropped to a sad little moan. Then, as if they had come to a decision among themselves, they sat firmly down where they were, their front eyes glinting up at Rosemary, and their back eyes, on which of course they were sitting, protected from the dust and dirt of the road by their back paws which they folded underneath them.

‘Well, that hasn’t worked,’ said John.

‘Could we pick them up one by one and put them back in their holes?’ said Rosemary doubtfully. But she made no move to do it.

Reluctantly John stooped down, and gingerly stretched out his hand to the nearest Scrabble. Just as he was about to pick it up, quick as lightning, it turned and nipped him on the thumb.

‘Ow! That hurt!’ he said.

The creatures were silent now, but very watchful.

‘Well,’ said John. ‘I don’t see what else we can do. Maybe they’ll go back of their own accord if we leave them to it. Let’s go home,’ he went on. ‘I vote we put off going to Tucket Towers till tomorrow. It must be getting frightfully late.’

Rosemary agreed. They turned to go back to Highdown with a feeling of relief. But the relief was short lived. They had only gone a few yards before there was a shrill, excited twittering, and the Scrabbles came streaming after them, their feet pattering on the hard road with a sound like the keys of forty typewriters all typing together.

‘That’s torn it!’ said John. ‘If they want to follow I don’t see how we can stop them.’

‘But if they come home with us, what shall we do with them? And what on earth will Uncle Zack and Mrs Bodkin say?’ said Rosemary. ‘If we tell them they are road studs come alive, they’ll have a fit. Isn’t there somewhere we can hide them till we can think of some plan?’

‘There’s probably some ghastly law about stealing road studs,’ said John gloomily.

‘Let me think,’ he went on desperately, his fists clenched against his forehead. ‘I know,’ he said at last. ‘Once we’ve got them home, we can shut them in that old shed at the bottom of the garden, where Uncle Zack used to keep hens. Nobody ever goes there.’

‘But we can’t go through the village with a pack of Scrabbles squeaking and squawking behind us!’ said Rosemary.

‘Well then, we shall just have to goround the village. I think I can find the way. But it’ll take much longer, so we’d better get going. Come on!’

They set off at a brisk pace, with the Scrabbles, twittering excitedly, streaming behind them.

8. Unwishing

IT was a weary, untidy pair who at last reached home. It took a great deal longer than they expected, to find their way round the village. Once, they got lost in a small wood, and had to crawl through a thicket to find the path again. Twice, they had to climb a wall. Rosemary’s half-hope that they would lose the Scrabbles on the way came to nothing. As they reached each obstacle, their twittering grew a little agitated, but after some excited scurrying to and fro, they squeezed themselves over, under or through everything in their way, to join John and Rosemary the other side, squeaking with renewed vigour at their cleverness.

Once, when they were on a well-marked path, they heard someone coming towards them. The only way the Scrabbles could be persuaded to hide in a rather muddy ditch was to crouch down in it themselves, till the danger was past.

It was nearly dark when they reached home.

‘Just as well,’ said John. ‘Uncle Zack wouldn’t notice what we looked like anyway, but Mother Boddles will want to know exactly how we’ve got in such a mess if she spots us before we can clean up a bit.’

‘As soon as we’ve shut the Scrabbles up, we can sneak in through the side door,’ said Rosemary.

It was easier said than done to persuade the creatures to go into the shed. When they tried to shoo them in, they stood stock still, muttering suspiciously.

‘It’s no good,’ said John. ‘It’s you they always follow: you’ll have to go in first, then nip out quickly when they are all inside and I’ll slam the door behind you.’

It took quite a lot of courage for Rosemary to walk into the dark shed with the Scrabbles twittering round her feet. She could not see them clearly, but she could feel them tickling her ankles as they jostled their way in beside her. When a quick glance over her shoulder showed that the last one was through the opening, before they realized what she was doing, she turned, and with a flying leap escaped from the shed. Instantly John slammed the door behind her. Rosemary leaned against it with a sigh of relief.

‘Good old Rosie!’ said John.

‘But I feel such apig!’ said Rosemary. ‘Tricking them like that when they were trusting us. Listen! They’re squeaking so unhappily. Will they be all right? Do you think they’re hungry?’

‘Goodness knows,’ said John. ‘But what on earth do Scrabbles eat?’

‘We found a hedgehog once in the garden at home, and we fed it on bread and milk,’ said Rosemary doubtfully. ‘We might try that.’

‘All right, but we’ll have to wait till after supper. I expect they’ll have calmed down a bit by then. We’d better have a good tidy up first. We’re pretty muddy from that ditch.’

‘I’ve been thinking all the way home,’ said Rosemary, as they washed their hands. ‘I think I know how it happened. The Scrabbles I mean. …’

‘Well, go on, clever!’ said John.

‘Do you remember when we pulled the purple cracker at the bus stop?’ said Rosemary. ‘I was wearing the Golden Gew-Gaw, and when I said “I wish I could fly”, I did a little way, but then I came down, smack.’

‘So what?’ said John.

‘I was wearing it again when we had that silly row about the cat’s eyes, and when I said “I wish they’d come alive”, they did. I think it’s a wishing ring.’

‘I say, fancy you thinking all that out!’ said John, and the respect with which he said it made up for the number of times he had made her shut up. ‘But wait a minute. You hadn’t got the ring when we were scrapping. It was in my tin for Special Things.’

Rosemary shook her head.‘That’s just where you’re wrong. We took it out of the box so that we could talk to Calidor, and I must have put it in my pocket afterwards, and when I shoved my hands in too, because they were cold, I must have slipped it on without thinking. I remember taking it off on the way home with theScrabbles.’

John gave a slow, breathy whistle. Then he said:‘But look here! If it’s a wishing ring as well as letting us hear cats talk, all we’ve got to do is to wish the Scrabbles back in their holes again. Where is it now?’

‘In my bedroom, in my coat pocket.’

‘Then what are we waiting for?’ said John.

Together they stampeded up the stairs. Rosemary didn’t wait to switch the bedroom light on, but rushed to the peg on which her coat was hanging, and after some frantic fumbling in the wrong pockets she found it at last. Standing very straight and stiff, with the Golden Gew-Gaw on her upraised finger, in a solemn voice she said: ‘I wish to goodness the Scrabbles were back in their holes again.’ Then feeling she had perhaps not been very polite she added under her breath: ‘Yours sincerely, Rosemary Brown.’

For a moment they stood very still.

‘The stone in the ring,’ said John. ‘It gave a sort of wink!’ But Rosemary had switched on the light. Its hard, white glare banished the shadows, and shone in every corner of the room.

‘Carbonel was right. The ring is dangerous. Do you think we ought to put it in the dustbin, or bury it or something?’

‘If we did we couldn’t hear Carbonel or Calidor talking. Here, stick it back in the tin, and we must be very careful not to take it out unless we specially want to hear them.’ He snapped the lid firmly down on the Gew-Gaw as he spoke.

‘I do wish Carbonel would come so that we can tell him everything that’s happened.’

‘But we promised Miss Dibdin we wouldn’t tell a human soul,’ said John.

‘Carbonel isn’t human. He’s a cat,’ said Rosemary.

John grinned.‘You aren’t as stupid as you look!’ he said. But by the friendly way he tweaked her hair, she knew he was paying her a compliment.

‘You don’t think something has happened to him, do you?’ said Rosemary. ‘Carbonel I mean?’

‘Something’ll happen to us if we don’t go down to supper!’

On their way downstairs they met Mrs Bodkin.‘Where have you been all this time?’ she said. ‘I didn’t hear you come in. All that smarmed-down hair! It isn’t natural,’ she added suspiciously.

‘Oh, we’ve been in for ages,’ said John airily. ‘Getting cleaned up for supper.’

‘Lucky for you supper’s late. Mr Sprules, him that keeps the second-hand book shop in Broomhurst, called, and he’s staying on.’

Mr Sprules was a large, bald, friendly man, and both John and Rosemary were glad of his presence over supper, because they had so much to think about. They sat in silent thought, munching their food, barely aware of Mr Sprules’s boom and Uncle Zack’s lighter voice answering one another; their talk bouncing backwards and forwards across the table, like a ball in a game of tennis. But they both looked up sharply from their plates when they heard the words ‘cat’s eyes’.

‘A funny thing,’ Mr Sprules was saying. ‘Some silly young vandals have dug up the studs on the stretch of road beyond the railway bridge, down Sheepshank Lane. They were talking about it at the tobacconist’s when I looked in on my way here.’

Rosemary sat up with a jerk. Her face was red, and her eyes wide.‘It might not have been “stupid vandals”,’ she said indignantly. ‘And — how do the tobacconist people know about it so soon? It was only …’

But at this point, John, who was unable to nudge her in the ribs this time, because of the width of the Cromwellian table, broke into a prolonged, rather artificial cough.

‘Have some water, my boy,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘You’d be surprised how soon news gets round in a village.’ He looked thoughtfully from John to Rosemary. ‘You’re unusually quiet, you two! Sure you’re all right?’ Reassured by their nods he went on: ‘How did you get on this afternoon?They’ve been delivering leaflets for me, for the Sale on Saturday,’ he explained to Mr Sprules.

‘Except for Tucket Towers, we went everywhere, I think,’ said John. ‘It was getting rather late, so we thought we’d better leave that till tomorrow.’

‘Well done!’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I’m very grateful to you both. I’m afraid I have left the leaflets rather late.’

‘Don’t forget I said I’d come and lend a hand at the Sale,’ said Mr Sprules.

‘Very good of you, my dear chap,’ said Uncle Zack.

‘Talking of Tucket Towers,’ went on Mr Sprules, ‘Mrs Witherspoon came into my shop the other day and bought a couple of battered old books from the bargain tray and asked my young assistant to take them out to her tricycle. Very high and mighty she was!’

‘She is a strange old thing,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘Lives in that great house all alone, and dresses up for dinner every night, they say, although it’s probably nothing but baked beans on toast. The house used to be full of really lovely stuff, furniture and old silver, but she’s sold it now,I believe. I dare say she’ll come to the Sale, buy an old cracked plate, and eat an enormous tea!’

‘You’ve never provided refreshments before?’ said Mr Sprules.

‘It has never been so important for me to sell things before,’ said Uncle Zack ruefully. ‘I wish I had a better head for figures. I had another very disturbing letter this morning. I’m afraid I shall have to sell nearly all my favourite things.’

‘Not your special treasures?’ said Rosemary. Uncle Zack nodded.

‘It was Mrs Bodkin’s idea about refreshments. She said it would make people in a better mood to buy things, with a cup of hot tea inside them and a couple of her macaroon biscuits.’

‘A very sensible woman!’ said Mr Sprules.

‘Oh well, let’s talk about something more cheerful,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I tell you what! How about a game of Heads-Bodies-and-Tails or something, after supper? Could you face it, Sprules?’

‘There’s nothing I’d like better!’

Next morning, when Mrs Bodkin brought in the scrambled eggs for breakfast, she was breathing rather heavily and her usually neat hair straggled over her forehead.

‘Why, Mrs Bodkin!’ said Uncle Zack. ‘Is anything the matter? You look upset.’

‘I’ve had a nasty turn,’ said Mrs Bodkin, with a hand on the heaving bib of her apron. ‘I would never have believed it! I can’t abide rats. Never could from a child.’

‘Rats?’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I’m glad to say we’ve never been troubled with them in this house.’

‘Not in the house,’ said Mrs Bodkin. ‘That shed at the bottom of the garden!’ John and Rosemary exchanged anxious glances. ‘I went down there before getting breakfast, to see if that big old enamel bowl was there — for the biscuit mixture for the Sale. As soon as I opened the door they came pouring out. Hundreds of them! They nearly knocked me over. They went streaming up the garden in a sort of huddle. The queerest-looking rats you ever saw! Square they were, with great shining eyes, and not a tail amongst ’em. And squeaking! You never heard the like!’

‘How extraordinary!’ said Uncle Zack. ‘What did you do?’

‘I came over quite queer,’ replied Mrs Bodkin. ‘So I sat down on that broken old wheelbarrow, till I felt a bit better.’

‘I’m very sorry you’ve had such a shock,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘Perhaps you’d better go and lie down for a little.’ Then he turned to John and Rosemary. ‘Come on, you youngsters. We’d better go and look into this straight away.’

And leaving Mrs Bodkin protesting at the untouched scrambled egg cooling on their plates, they hurried away down the garden.

The door of the shed was open, and swinging on its hinges. John and Rosemary, their curiosity overcoming their reluctance, followed close behind as Uncle Zack stooped to go inside. They looked anxiously round in silence while he poked into every corner, behind piles of empty flower-pots and rusty garden tools.

‘Not a trace of a rat or a rat-hole,’ he said at last.

Nor a Scrabble either! thought both John and Rosemary. They grinned at each other with relief.

‘Curious,’ went on Uncle Zack. ‘Mrs Bodkin is a sensible woman. She can’t have imagined it; though she may have exaggerated the number of them, of course. “Squarish and not a tail between them”?’ He laughed. ‘A new kind of rat, perhaps? Sprules will be interested when I tell him.’

‘Then we can’t have unwished the Scrabbles after all,’ said John gloomily, when they had finished their breakfast of stone-cold scrambled egg and leathery toast, and Uncle Zack had gone off to the little room he called his office. ‘If it is a wishing ring, why didn’t it work this time?’

‘P’raps I didn’t do the wishing properly,’ said Rosemary. ‘Or more likely it won’t unwish its own wishes.’

‘Well, let’s hope when Mother Boddles saw them scuttle off up the garden they were making for their holes,’ said John, with more confidence than he really felt. They went and hung over the gate in front of the house and looked up and down the road. There was nothing to be seen of the Scrabbles. ‘What are you staring at?’ said John.

‘I was watching that little cat limping along on the other side of the road,’ said Rosemary.

9. Dumpsie

ROSEMARY crossed to where, in the shadow of the hedge opposite, a small, draggled-looking tabby cat, not much bigger than a kitten, was stumbling on three paws over the rough grass. The fourth paw it seemed unable to put to the ground. It shrank back when she came near and, with flattened ears, spat halfheartedly, as she bent over it.

‘It’s all right, Puss,’ said Rosemary gently. ‘I’m not going to hurt you.’ She knelt on the grass, and with two careful fingers stroked the silky top of its head. ‘It looks as if its paw is cut quite badly,’ she went on to John, who had joined her. ‘I wonder how it happened? Let’s get out the Golden Gew-Gaw and find out.’ Under her stroking fingers Rosemary felt the little animal’s tense body begin to relax.

‘Where do you come from, Puss?’ she asked, when she and John had both crooked little fingers through the ring.

‘We’re Hearing Humans,’ added John, ‘so you can tell us.’

‘I don’t care a whisker who you be!’ said the cat, looking up at them suspiciously. ‘I’m not telling nothing. Neither where nor why, because there’s some in high places trusts me not to. Trouble brewing, there is.Bad trouble, where I come from. Mind you, I’m not telling what, neither.’

‘Can’t you even tell us how you hurt your paw?’

‘Ah, that’s different,’ said the cat. ‘Boys that was. Threw a stone at me. Them Fallowhithe lads …’ She broke off, and went on sulkily: ‘There, I’ve gone and told you “where”, and I didn’t mean to.’

‘Do you mean you’ve come all the way from Fallowhithe?’ said Rosemary. ‘That’s miles!’

‘Since the edge of last night I’ve been padding it. But with only three paws it’s hard going.’

‘Won’t you tell us who you are?’ asked John.

‘Me?’ replied the cat. ‘I’m a nobody, I am. That’s why I sez to myself, no one won’t notice the likes of me searching here and seeking there.’

‘What are you seeking and searching for?’ asked John.

‘That ‘ld be telling!’ said the little cat. ‘But I’ll go so far as to say it’s for who, not what.’ A small pink tongue flicked out for a moment. The cat gave a little moan. ‘What wouldn’t I give for so much as a dribble of milk!’

‘Look here,’ said Rosemary, turning to John. ‘Couldn’t we carry the poor thing indoors and bathe its paw?’

‘Just what I was thinking,’ he said. ‘And give it some milk. Come on!’

‘Here, wait a minute! Suppose I don’t want to come?’ said the little animal, shrinking back even further into the hedge. ‘Where might “indoors” be, I should like to know?’

‘Why here. Uncle Zack’s house, at Highdown.’

‘Highdown?’ said the little cat, with a sudden lift of her drooping head. ‘Then I’m in luck. For that’s where the seeking and searching really has to begin!’

‘Come on then,’ said John. ‘We’d better ask if we can keep her.’

Uncle Zack was busy in his office. He looked up absently for a moment from the papers that littered his desk, and waved distractedly at the one on which he seemed to be working. It was covered with figures, and almost as many doodles.

‘A cat?’ he said absently. ‘Yes, of course, of course. Might help with those rats. What is 425 divided by nineteen?’ Luckily he did not seem to expect an answer.

Mrs Bodkin, on the other hand, frowned rather fiercely.

‘A cat? Well, I don’t know! As if I hadn’t enough to do, what with you two, and the things to make for the Sale and …’ She broke off: ‘My goodness me, that’s a nasty cut on its paw! Poor little thing! Well, what are you waiting for? Go and get the First Aid Box. It’s in the cupboardin the bathroom, and there’s some milk in a jug on the kitchen table.’

So that was all right.

Presently, bathed, bandaged and fed, with an empty milk saucer alongside, the little cat sat and washed itself by the sitting-room fire. Only then did John and Rosemary realize what a pretty creature it was, with shining tabby coat, snow-white stockings and wide white ruff.

‘It’s awfully difficult to talk to someone when you don’t know what to call them,’ said John.

‘You are a “she” anyway, aren’t you?’ asked Rosemary.

The cat looked up from licking a hind leg.‘Ah, a she I be, right enough. And you’ve been that kind I don’t mind telling you my mammy calls me Wellingtonia.’

‘What a grand name!’ said Rosemary.

‘Not really. Born and bred in a Wellington boot I was, that’s why. Wellingtonia for best, but Dumpsie for ordinary, because the boot was on Fallowhithe Rubbish Dump. There’s some as turns up their grand noses at anywhere so low, but snug and warm it was, and handy for haddock heads, and the licking of sardine tins and such.’

‘Dumpsie,’ said Rosemary thoughtfully. ‘Where have I heard that name …?’ But John interrupted.

‘Of course, I remember! This seeking and searching,’ he said to Dumpsie. ‘It wouldn’t be for a cat called Calidor?’

She lifted a startled face.‘Ssh!’ she said, looking nervously over her shoulder. ‘Don’t you go for to call him by that name! Crumpet he’s called in these parts. He toldme all about it, but he didn’t say a word to anyone else. How in the world do the likes of you know who he really is, when he was so set on it being a secret?’

‘We know because we talked to him only yesterday,’ said John.

‘NowI remember,’ said Rosemary. ‘He told us that his dear little Dumpsie was the only cat he could ever marry!’

‘And there can’t be two cats with such a sil … I mean, unusual name,’ went on John. (Rosemary’s nudge had been nearly too late, but Dumpsie did not seem to have noticed.)

‘Did he really say that?’ she said softly, and she lifted her chin and purred such a purr as John and Rosemary had never heard before; but not for long. She stopped abruptly, and rose unsteadily on her three sound paws.

‘And while I’ve been guzzling and gossiping here the bad trouble may be getting worse. I must go. Where can I find him as calls himself Crumpet?’

Rosemary looked at John.‘Couldn’t we take her to the station on our way to Tucket Towers? We must get on and do it. That’s if you’d like that, Dumpsie?’

‘That I would! You can carry me there just as soon as your great clumping feet can take you. Must be awkward, only having two paws apiece to walk on.’

They met Mrs Bodkin as they were about to set out.

‘Going for a walk?’ she said. ‘You’d better wear your macs and gum-boots. It poured in the night, and it looks like rain again.’

They hurried off, taking it in turns to carry Dumpsie, and rather uncomfortably linked together by the magic ring, so that they could listen to the little cat’s stories of life on the Dump, where there never seemed to be a dull moment. They were halfway down Sheepshank Lane when Rosemary said: ‘Half a minute. I’ve got a stone in my shoe.’

She slipped her finger from the Golden Gew-Gaw, and sat down on the grass by the side of the road, while she wrestled with the knot in her shoe-lace. John sat down beside her, and Dumpsie wandered towards the hedge.

‘What are you looking like that for?’ said Rosemary when, the stone removed, she had tied up her shoe-lace again. Both John and Dumpsie were leaning towards the hedge with a listening expression on their faces. ‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘Ssh! Of course you can’t,’ whispered John. ‘Cats! Talking! The other side of the hedge.’ And at the same time he held out his hand so that Rosemary could slip her finger through the golden band of the magic ring. And at once she heard a high-and-mighty cat voice say in surprise:

‘Calidor! Here alone in Broomhurst country?’ And although it was a purring voice, it had a cold and cruel undertone. ‘My faithful Mattins!’ John and Rosemary exchanged glances. ‘This Calidor, who refuses to marry my daughter, has the impertinence to wander into my country as though it belongs to him! What do you think of that, my darling child?’

‘Grisana! It must be!’ whispered John, and Dumpsie nodded.

‘What do I think, Mama?’ drawled a second voice. ‘Calidor is nothing to me. I was resigned to becoming his wife only because our two united countries would have made a single kingdom worth my ruling later on.’

‘Dear child, always so ambitious!’ purred Grisana.

‘Of course, I should see to it that Fallowhithe cats would be taught their place. Best fish bits for Broomhurst beasts, and so on.’

‘Always thinking of other people!’ said Grisana, but the purr left her voice when she went on: ‘All the same, think of the insult to the Royal house of Castrum, when the marriage was planned so long ago. It must be avenged!’

‘Of course, I never bear a grudge,’ replied the second voice, ‘but perhaps he should be … well … punished!’ And the lingering hiss with which it said ‘punished’ made Dumpsie’s fur bristle.

‘That must be Melissa. The one Crumpet called Slypaws,’ whispered Rosemary.

‘Never fear, my child,’ went on Grisana. ‘For his own good, of course, he shall be well and truly … scrodged!’ Here her voice sank to a yowling spit.

‘He has run away from Fallowhithe to become a common witch’s cat, you say, Mattins? Wretched animal! But not so wretched as he will be whenwe have finished with him! But I am glad to hear that you, at least, have seen the error of your ways, and have decided to give up such an unworthy trade.’

‘My witch doesn’t want me any more,’ said Mattins sulkily. ‘Says she’s found another cat she thinks will look better on her broomstick than I should. Not that I’ve seen him, mind you. She says she’ll find me a few odd jobs to do instead. Me, doing odd jobs instead of magic! Grow … ouch!’ he spat.

‘How very humbling for you,’ said Grisana sweetly. ‘So unreliable, witches! But do not leave your witch woman, for my sake. You may overhear something quite useful. Pretend to oblige her. Come, Melissa! We must go. And remember, my good Mattins, I should like to hear more about this cat who is to take your place. You shall be rewarded for what you have told us today.’ The voices faded as the three cats moved away.

‘That beastly sneaking Mattins!’ burst out John. ‘He must have been listening to every word when Calidor was talking to us yesterday at the station. No wonder he ran off when we called to him.’

‘But I thought he was Calidor’s friend?’ said Rosemary.

‘Well, he doesn’t seem to be now,’ said John shortly. ‘We must warn him!’

‘And about Grisana too,’ said Rosemary. ‘Come on. We must hurry. Hi! Dumpsie, wait for us!’

The little cat was already limping ahead as fast as her three paws could carry her.

‘Oh, make haste! Make haste! Calidor is in danger!’

John scooped her up from the road, and together they all three hurried towards the station.

‘I wish to goodness Carbonel was here,’ said Rosemary. ‘I wonder why he doesn’t come? I’m sure he’d know what to do about Calidor and Grisana.’

‘And the Golden Gew-Gaw. I don’t trust that ring,’ said John. ‘We still don’t know what has happened to the Scrabbles.’

‘I wonder if the instructions really were in the purple cracker, and we just didn’t find them,’ went on Rosemary.

‘It’s possible …’ John, who was carrying Dumpsie, broke off. ‘Ow! That hurt. You scratched me!’

‘I know. I meant to,’ said Dumpsie coolly. ‘Because you won’t listen. Just go on yammer, yammer, you do. I’ve been trying to tell you. Carbonel has disappeared! Gone! And nobody don’t know where he be. That’s what I’ve come all the way from Fallowhithe to tell Calidor.’

10. Where is Carbonel?

WHEN they reached the hole in the hedge, John and Rosemary slowed down.

‘After all, we’ve got as much right as Miss Dibdin to be in the station, though I suppose I’d better not go into the Ladies’ Waiting Room again,’ said John.

‘That’s Miss Dibdin’s special place,’ Rosemary explained to Dumpsie. ‘She’s Cal … I mean Crumpet’s witch. I don’t think she likes us much, specially John. Let’s hope she isn’t there.’

‘S’pose I go first and find out?’ said Dumpsie. ‘She won’t mind the likes of me. I’ll give one yowl if there’s no one there, and two if there is. Just you wait round the corner.’

She limped out of sight, and John and Rosemary waited… and waited. But there was not so much as a mew from Dumpsie.

‘Come on,’ said John at last. ‘We’d better go and see what’s happening.’

They tiptoed cautiously up on to the platform. It all seemed much the same as before, except for a large pile of what looked like firewood, stacked by the door to the booking office. There was no sign of Miss Dibdin. Dumpsie and Calidor were sitting side by side on the battered station bench. Their two tails were intertwined, and they were gazing at one another with unblinking eyes. Dumpsie was making little croodling noises in her throat, and round the gentle sound Calidor wove a mighty purr.‘As though they were singing a part-song together,’ as John said afterwards.

‘She’s forgotten all about us!’ said Rosemary.

At the sound of her voice the two cats stopped singing abruptly, and turned quickly round.

‘Welcome, Hearing Humans!’ said Crumpet. ‘I am more grateful than I can say for your kindness to my friend Dumpsie. So Grisana and Slypaws are on the war-path? You began explaining some further cause for alarm,’ he turned towards Dumpsie, ‘when we broke off on to … well, more, personalmatters. And I hear that Mattins — may his whiskers wilt! — has turned traitor!’

‘But there’s worse to tell,’ broke in Dumpsie. ‘That’s what I came all the way from Fallowhithe for. King Carbonel has disappeared! No one knows where.’

‘My father disappeared!’ said Crumpet in astonishment.

‘I thought you ought to know,’ went on Dumpsie. ‘And me being the only one as knowed where you were … well, here I be … Oh, I told no one else, trust me!’

‘And she came all that long way with a wounded paw!’ added Rosemary.

‘I hope I done right?’ said Dumpsie, looking anxiously at Crumpet.

‘Of course,’ he said gravely. ‘You are as brave as you are beautiful, my dear.’ She looked down modestly at her paws, and then went on:

‘Such a scurrying and hurrying there is, all over Fallowhithe, in search of His Majesty. Such mewking and miaowing in corners and on rooftops! Them alley cats is getting out of hand, as you’d expect. Roving around the rooftops at night singing rude songs. Queen Blandamour is at her wits’ end to know what’s to do for the best.’

‘My poor mama,’ said Crumpet soberly. ‘The alley cats are good enough creatures, but a bit wild. When did my father disappear?’

‘Three days after you left for Highdown,’ said Dumpsie.

‘That’s funny,’ said John. ‘When we talked to him at Rosie’s house, he said he could spend no more time away searching for you, and that he must get back to affairs of state.’

Calidor jumped down from the seat. He stood with head up and tail erect.

‘This matter is serious,’ he said crisply, and there was no mistaking that it was Calidor, the royal son of Carbonel, who was speaking; no longer Crumpet, the witch’s cat.

‘I must return to Fallowhithe immediately and take matters in hand. Dumpsie, you will stay here with the Hearing Humans, until your paw is healed. I must make all the haste I can, and you could not keep up with me.’

‘But whatever has happened to Carbonel?’ said Rosemary. ‘We thought it was queer when he didn’t turn up at Highdown when he said he would.’

‘He said that, did he?’ went on Calidor. ‘Then I shall search in Fallowhithe, and you will keep your eyes and ears open here. I shall depend on you.’

‘Yes, but wait a minute …’ began John. Calidor held up a restraining paw.

‘In the meantime, look out for Grisana and Slypaws Melissa! Guard against the traitor Mattins, and keep a watch on the goings-on at Tucket Towers.’

‘That’s all very well!’ began John again.

‘I have no time to discuss things further,’ broke in Calidor impatiently. ‘I have a long way to go. Goodbye. I shall come back.’ And with a flick of his tail he turned and hurried away down the platform.

‘Well, of all the cheek!’ said John angrily. ‘Exactly like Carbonel again, ordering us about. Do this! Do that!’

‘Well, I think he’s rather splendid,’ said Rosemary. ‘After all, he’s doing exactly what Carbonel wanted him to, without any fussing from us. You ought to be pleased. I’m sure he’s done the right thing. What do you think, Dumpsie?’

The little cat was not listening. She was gazing at the spot where Calidor had turned the corner out of sight, making the same little croodling noise, and kneading the hard boards of the platform with her front paws.

‘Eh? What’s that?’ she said, suddenly coming to. ‘Of course Calidor is right!’

‘Well, come on, Rosie,’ said John. ‘We must get going, and leave that leaflet at Tucket Towers. Hallo, it’s raining again.’

‘Then you’d best leave me behind here under the shelter,’ said Dumpsie. ‘You can’t dodge the raindrops on three paws, and I don’t like to get my whiskers wet.’

‘But suppose Miss Dibdin comes back and finds you here?’ said Rosemary.

‘It’s easy for the likes of me to hide,’ said Dumpsie. ‘She won’t see me.’

‘If you’re sure,’ said Rosemary uncertainly.

‘We should be much quicker on our own, without wearing the ring between us,’ went on John. ‘We’re late as it is. We’ll pick you up on the way back.’

‘All right,’ said Rosemary. ‘But keep on the lookout for us, Dumpsie. We don’t want to meet Miss Dibdin again if we can help it. And do take care.’

As they hurried down the road Rosemary said:‘I’d almost forgotten about the Scrabbles. We’ve got to see if they have gone back to their holes.’

On reaching the spot where the cat’s eye studs should have started they stopped dead. The small square holes were still empty.

‘Well, that proves it. The unwishing didn’t work, and the Scrabbles must still be somewhere about,’ said John, as he poked a stick down one of the holes to make quite sure.

‘But if they aren’t here, wherever can they be?’ said Rosemary, looking uneasily over her shoulder.

‘It’s no good asking me,’ said John. ‘But if they’ve taken themselves off, it’s their lookout, not ours.’

‘I suppose so,’ Rosemary agreed doubtfully.

‘And what’s more,’ went on John, ‘we fussed enough yesterday because we couldn’t get rid of them, so I’m blowed if I’m going to get fussed today because they’ve gone! Bother the Scrabbles! Race you to the drive of Tucket Towers.’

11.‘May The Best Witch Win!’

‘SUPPOSE we meet Miss Dibdin?’ said Rosemary, as they walked up the long weedy drive, which was dark with overhanging trees and jostling rhododendron bushes.

‘Even if we do, she can’t stop us shoving the leaflet in the letterbox and coming away again,’ said John.

Presently they emerged from the gloom of the drive, on to what had once been a wide carriage sweep in front of the steps leading to the front door.

‘I say, what a grand house!’ said Rosemary, standing still to admire it. ‘All those rows of windows, and the tower, and the up-and-down edge to the roof. Just like a castle!’

‘It really was grand once, Uncle Zack says; but most of it’s shut up now.’

‘I suppose that’s why the curtains are drawn in nearly all the windows. It makes it look … sort of blind and sad. Look, there’s Mrs Witherspoon’s tricycle!’

It stood at the bottom of the flight of steps. They walked across the carriage sweep to look at it, rather wishing their feet didn’t scrunch so loudly on the gravel.

‘Gosh!’ said John. ‘Do you see what’s sitting in the basket on the handlebars? A great warty toad!’

They peered at it in astonishment, and the toad, squat and unmoving, stared back with unblinking yellow eyes.

‘I suppose it is alive?’ said Rosemary. ‘It’s so still it might be stuffed.’

‘Must be alive. Look at that pulse thing beating in its throat,’ said John. And as if to prove it, the creature’s long tongue suddenly whipped out and caught an unwary fly that had settled on the edge of the basket.

‘Ugh! What a horrid-looking creature!’ said Rosemary. ‘Not my idea of a cosy sort of pet. Come on, let’s get rid of the leaflets and go home.’

When they reached the front door, which was large and heavy, and studded with nails, they found it was not quite closed, and the sound of arguing voices could be heard on the other side.

‘I keep telling you, Dulcie,’ said a voice they recognized as Miss Dibdin’s. ‘Itmust be black. Agrey cat won’t do. You can’t use Mattins. Unless you keep to the rules, nothing will work properly.’

‘My dear Dorothy,’ replied a high commanding voice. ‘I no longer need your advice. I told you. Yesterday I discovered a treasure in Sprules’s book shop in Broomhurst, in the bargain tray. Half the cover is missing, and unfortunately some of the pages, but even so it will teach me far more than you are ever likely to know. What with Gullion sitting on my pillow every night. …’

‘You mean to say you let that horrid toad sleep on your pillow?’ interrupted Miss Dibdin.

‘My precious Gullion, horrid? Rubbish! He is invaluable. All night long he whispers delicious wicked schemes in my ear. I can hear them in my dreams. As for Mattins, I dare say I shall use him to run a few simple errands now and then, but I have discovered the perfect cat. Black as ebony, and with dignity that would do credit to any broomstick turn-out!’

‘I’m sure I’m glad to hear it,’ said Miss Dibdin coldly, in the sort of voice that showed she was not really glad at all. ‘And where is this precious perfect animal, I should like to know? I haven’t seen him about the house.’

‘Well, there I must admit I am in a small difficulty. The ungrateful creature says that nothing will make it become a witch’s cat. On Gullion’s advice I have shut it up until it comes to its senses, and I keep the key of its prison on a string round my neck.’

‘You’ll need eyes back and front, to keep a cat prisoner that means to escape,’ said Miss Dibdin.

‘I might even manage that,’ said Mrs Witherspoon, and she laughed harshly. ‘At least, I have set a day-and-night guard over it who might have been made for the job. I met them wandering about in Sheepshank Lane. He won’t escape! And if the cat persists in disobliging me, Gullion has suggested a number of ways to … shall we say …persuade it; such as plaiting its whiskers, which are remarkably fine.’

‘But how will you know when it has come to its senses?’ asked Miss Dibdin.

‘Ah ha!’ said Mrs Witherspoon triumphantly. ‘It so happens that I have succeeded in making a magic by which I can hold a conversation with any cat I choose.’ There was a gasp from Miss Dibdin, but Mrs Witherspoon swept on. ‘The instructions were in the book. A special purple brew it was, chanting the right words while you mix it — in rhyme, of course.’

By this time John and Rosemary had quite forgotten that they had no business to be listening, and had pushed the door open wide enough to peer inside. It opened on to a large hall, which was high and raftered, with a number of doors leading from it, each with a pair of stag’s antlers above it. A wide staircase mounted to a gallery at the far end.

‘Dulcie, dear!’ pleaded Miss Dibdin in a wheedling voice. ‘Couldn’t you spare me a teeny weeny drop of the mixture for hearing cats? Just enough for one ear perhaps?’

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‘Certainly not,’ said Mrs Witherspoon coldly. ‘Anyway it boiled over. There’s none left. Perhaps I should have brewed it in something bigger than the egg saucepan. You chose to experiment in secret in the Ladies’ Waiting Room at the station. Well, Gullion and I shall experiment in secret at Tucket Towers; and may the best witch win!’

‘Very well,’ said Miss Dibdin angrily. ‘When my parcel comes …’

‘You and your parcel! I don’t believe the silly thing exists!’

Miss Dibdin drew herself up.‘Well, there is something that evenI have managed to do. I don’t think I can have got the proportionsquite right, or else I stirred it in the wrong direction, so that the result is not quite perfect, but it nearly works. How do you think I came from the station just now?’

‘Walked by the field path as usual, I suppose,’ said Mrs Witherspoon impatiently.

‘That’s just where you’re wrong!’ said Miss Dibdin triumphantly. ‘I came by broom!’

‘You mean you flew by broomstick?’ Mrs Witherspoon laughed scornfully. ‘I shall believe that when I see it!’

‘Very well, you shall see it!’ said Miss Dibdin defiantly.

She strutted to the umbrella stand. In it, beside a very baggy old umbrella, was the broom they had seen in the station waiting room. She straddled the handle. Then, with her head held high, she cried in a shrill, singsong voice:‘To the Ladies’ Waiting Room. Kindly take me, faithful broom!’

For a moment nothing happened, then the broom gave a quiver, and very slowly rose from the floor. When it reached a height of about three feet it lurched sharply down again, and bumped on the ground with such force that she nearly fell off; then up it rose again, rising and falling, gaining no more height but gathering speed. Up and down, up and down it flew towards the door, in a series of hops— Miss Dibdin, hair coming down, tall black hat crooked and legs straight in front of her, laughing triumphantly. As the broom headed for the hall door John and Rosemary pushed it wide open, just in time for it to sweep through. As they watched it plummet down the steps, pick itself up and bouncetowards the drive, they heard the sound of striding footsteps crossing the hall, and hurriedly flattened themselves against the outside wall, on either side of the door. Mrs Witherspoon, as many old people do who live by themselves, was talking aloud to herself.

‘Just what I should expect,’ she said with a sniff. ‘She’s muddled her magic!’

All three watched Miss Dibdin’s strange progress down the drive; the broom sending up a small bow wave of gravel every time it swished along the ground, until it disappeared among the shadows of the trees, and Miss Dibdin’s wild laughter faded into silence. The last thing they heard was her distant voice calling shrilly: ‘May the best witch win!’ Then there was silence.

‘Well,’ said Mrs Witherspoon. ‘This is the last time I let lodgings! I shall certainly give her notice to leave!’ She slammed the door, and there was the grinding, grating sound of the turning of a key in a rusty lock.

For a few moments John and Rosemary stood pressed against the wall, not daring to move, then John whispered:‘I don’t think she saw us.’

‘Thank goodness!’ said Rosemary. ‘Let’s stick the leaflet in the letterbox and run!’

And that is exactly what they did. But as they slowed down before reaching the gate, John suddenly stopped dead.

‘I say, I’ve suddenly thought of something. Do you think that cat Mrs Witherspoon has made a prisoner could possibly be Carbonel? She said it was “black as ebony” …’

‘And would do credit to any broomstick turn-out …’ went on Rosemary. ‘With exceptionally fine whiskers.’

‘That describes him exactly!’

‘And explains why he hasn’t shown up as he said he would.’

‘John, how awful!’ said Rosemary. ‘What are we to do?’

‘First we’d better make quite sure it reallyis Carbonel, and find out where he is hidden. But we’ve got to pick up Dumpsie from the station, then let’s go home and think like mad.’

But when they reached Roundels at last they had something else to think about.

12. Light As Air

THERE was no sign of Miss Dibdin on the platform of the station when John and Rosemary peered cautiously round the corner. Dumpsie was sitting on the bench, licking her already spotless shirt front.

‘Quick!’ whispered Rosemary. ‘Let’s put the ring on!’

‘Hi, Dumpsie,’ hissed John when they had both slipped a finger through the golden band. ‘Is she inside?’

‘It’s all right,’ said the little cat. ‘I’m all alone. The witch woman has gone hopping over the fields on her broom to look for some plants she wants, to add to a special strong spell she’s got on the boil. I heard her mumbling to herself about it.’

‘I wonder what she’s up to?’ said John. ‘Let’s have a quick peek into her precious Ladies’ Waiting Room. We can open the door and just look.’

But the door was locked.

‘And we can’t look through the window because it’s made of frosted glass,’ said Rosemary. ‘What about pushing the bench underneath? If we stood on it, we might just be able to reach that strip of plain glass at the top.’

‘Stand on that old thing? It’d fall to bits if we so much as looked at it,’ said John. ‘Tell you what. If you made a back, so that I could stand on it, I think I could just reach the plain bit.’

‘What aboutyou making a back andme standing on it?’ said Rosemary, with some warmth.

‘No good. I’m taller than you.’

Grumbling under her breath, Rosemary bent over with her hands on her knees. John slipped off his Wellington boots, and climbed up on to her back, steadying himself with hands outstretched against the frosted glass.

‘What can you see?’ said Rosemary.

‘Not much. The fire is burning quite brightly, and the red fire-bucket is balanced on it, with masses of steam billowing out. That’s funny, the steam isgreen! I’ve never seen coloured steam before. What with the steam and the dirty window it’s hard to see anything. Wait a sec, and I’ll see if I can clean it up a bit.’

He breathed hard on the glass and rubbed it vigorously with his sleeve.

‘Look out!’ said Rosemary in a muffled voice. ‘Don’t wriggle and jiggle like that, it makes you twice as heavy!’

‘Sorry!’ said John. ‘I bet Miss Dibdin’s up to something. I wish I could see inside more clearly. It needs a bit of light and air. Green steam’s a warning. Crumbs! I wonder …’ he began, but Rosemary interrupted.

Now, with her shoulders hunched, and hair and coat collar round her ears, she could not hear John plainly. Repeating what shethought he had said, she went on crossly:‘Light as air? I wish you were, till morning comes. You weigh ten tons! That’s better,’ she went on, because suddenly she no longer felt the pressure of John’s feet on her shoulders. She pushed aside the lock of hair a little breeze had blown across her face but when she looked round he wasnowhere to be seen.

‘John!’ she called anxiously. ‘John! Where are you?’

A distant voice above her head called out:‘Help! Help! I’m up here!’

She looked up. John was spread-eagled, arms outstretched, with his back against the glass roof of the platform.

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‘What are you doing up there? Don’t be so silly!’ said Rosemary crossly. ‘Come down!’

‘I’m not being silly, it’syou. Ican’t come down,’ said John, in an exasperated voice. ‘When you said you wished I was as light as air, I suddenly floated up here. I couldn’t stop myself. How on earth am I going to get down again?’

‘Try kicking with your feet,’ said Rosemary, trying desperately not to panic. ‘You know, like you do when you’re swimming.’

John kicked with his feet. There was a tinkle of broken glass, and Rosemary ducked as a shower of splinters pattered down, missing her by inches.

‘It’s no good,’ said John. ‘I bet it’s that ring again. Are you wearing it?’

Rosemary looked at her hands. The Golden Gew-Gaw was on her forefinger.

‘The beastly thing has done it again,’ said John gloomily. ‘And we know it won’t un-wish its own wishes. I can see its red stone winking from up here, almost as though it’s making fun of us. I daren’t move. If I break another pane of glass in the roof I might float out through the hole and goodness knows where I’d get to. There’s quite a wind. Can’t you hook me down with something?’

‘I’ll see what I can find,’ said Rosemary doubtfully. She looked about her. Sticking out from the bottom of the pile of firewood waiting to be broken up, was a long branch. ‘Hold on,’ she called to John. ‘I think I’ve found something that will do!’

She held it up with both hands directly below him.‘Bother, it isn’t long enough, but it might be if I stand on something. I shall have to climb on the seat. I can’t help it if it is rotten.’

‘Do be careful!’ called John. But Rosemary was already pushing the ramshackle bench into position. ‘Hurry!’ shouted John. ‘I can see over the fields to Tucket Towers. Miss Dibdin has just come out of the clump of trees, and I think she’s carrying the broom!’

Rosemary climbed on to the bench, holding the branch in one hand, and steadying herself with the other against the window of the waiting room. Using the slats of the back of the seat as a ladder, she mounted on to the wide band of wood at the top.

‘I can’t look … up!’ she panted. ‘The seat’s too near the wall … And I can’t … hold the branch up for long … it’s too heavy.’

‘And I just can’t reach it. Oh help!’ said John in a despairing voice. ‘Miss Dibdin has got on to her broom and she’s swooping up the field! Hold the branch a bit to the left, Rosie. No, the other way, and a bit higher!’

The branch was so heavy that Rosemary had great difficulty in controlling it at all, and in her agitation, forgetting she might lose her balance if she moved her hand from the window, she clutched the branch with both fists, and, making a desperate attempt to reach John, pushed it as high in the air as she possibly could.

‘Got it!’ cried John triumphantly. ‘Hooray! Now I’ll hold on tight while you pull me down!’

But the sudden thrust of Rosemary’s feet against the top of the bench when she made her final attempt to reach John had been too much for the rotten wood. Just as he spoke, there was a sharp crack, the bench gave a lurch, the back collapsed, and John, Rosemary, branch and broken bench fell in a heap on the platform.

‘Are you all right, John?’ asked Rosemary anxiously.

‘I think I am,’ said John in a muffled voice, for he was at the bottom of the pile.

Rosemary began to stand up, just as a little breeze wafted across the platform, and immediately, still lying down, John started to rise from the ground.‘Look out!’ he yelled. She was just in time to turn and clutch his flapping arm and pull him down again.

‘You’d better sit on me. That ought to keep me down to earth. You’ve no idea how beastly it was up there. Why did you have to go and wish anything so asinine as me being “light as air”?’

‘Well, you were so beastly heavy,’ said Rosemary, who was wondering which bruise to rub first. ‘Besides, you said it first.’

‘I didn’t say anything of the sort!’ said John crossly. ‘I said Miss Dibdin’s room needed “light and air”. What on earth am I to do? I can’t spend the rest of my life with someone sitting on me!’

‘You might find it useful for something. Get a job as an astronaut or something. They float about, don’t they?’

‘Oh, be your age, Rosie! That’s not because … Oh, don’t let’s waste time scrapping.’

Rosemary picked up the magic ring, which had fallen from her finger when she fell, and absently slipped it on again, and at once she heard Dumpsie say:‘Eeh, what a fedaddle! Real interesting it was, seeing you float up in the air, like a bit of burnt paper on the Rubbish Dump! But what a fuss you’re making, when it’s only going to last till morning.’

‘Till morning?’ exclaimed Rosemary. John struggled up to a half-sitting position as she held out her hand so that he could slip his finger through the ring as well.

Dumpsie had started licking her snow-white ruff as calmly as though nothing unusual had happened, but she paused in her licking to say:

‘Well, that’s whatshe sez,’ waving her bandaged paw at Rosemary. ‘Trust me. Best memory on the Dump. She sez:

“Light as air?

I wish you were

Till morning comes.

You weigh ten tons!” ’

‘A sort of rhyme,’ said Rosemary.

‘A pretty rotten rhyme!’ grumbled John.

‘Then all we’ve got to do is to find some way of keeping you down to earth till tomorrow morning!’ said Rosemary.

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. But I can’t spend all night lying here with you sitting on top of me! Wait a minute, though. I’ve got an idea. You remember you said something about me being an astronaut? Well, you know how they wear great thick soles to their space suits? Well, if we could make my feet heavy …’

‘Of course!’ Rosemary broke in. ‘We could stuff your Wellingtons with sand and earth!’

‘And stones in my pockets!’

‘I’ll go and get some!’ she said, and jumped to her feet. John gave a warning shout. She whipped round. A sudden breeze had already wafted him shoulder high. She was just in time to pull him down again.

‘Phew! That was a near thing!’ said John. ‘You’d better pile the broken bits of seat on top of me, and any other old rubbish you can find.’

With a couple of brickends, two rusty iron wheels that might have once belonged to a porter’s truck, and a dented fire-bucket with a hole in it, balanced on top of him, as well as the broken seat, Rosemary felt he should be safe.

‘It would take a typhoon to shift me, with this lot on top,’ he said. ‘Talk about uncomfortable!’

Dumpsie had added her small weight by clambering on to the upturned bucket. Luckily John was not wearing the ring, so he did not hear her say wistfully as she looked at the pile of rubbish beneath her:‘Just like a bit of the dear old Dump!’ Oddly enough, he felt comforted to see her sitting there, unconcernedly licking her undamaged front paw.

In the meantime, Rosemary was frantically scooping up sand and stones with one hand, and anything heavy she could find on the track, while she held up her skirt, in which to carry it, with the other; for, halfway across the field, and heading straight for the station, she had seen Miss Dibdin. There was no time to lose. She scrambled back on to the platform, and, pushing John’s feet so that their soles were flat on the ground and his knees were up, she shovelled as much of her load as she could push into his Wellington boots.

‘Now, can you stand up?’ she said breathlessly. ‘Hurry, Miss Dibdin is nearly here.’

John sat up cautiously. With a clatter the collection of rubbish slid off him on to the platform. He stuffed the brickends into his mackintosh pockets on either side, together with as much of the remaining earth and stones as they would hold: then, very gingerly, he got to his feet. For a moment he stood there quite firmly, with Rosemary hovering near with outstretched hands to grab him back if he began to drift up into the air again. A slow grin spread over his face.

‘It’s all right. Come on, let’s go!’

As he spoke they heard Miss Dibdin’s shrill voice urging on her broom.

‘Up! Up! Come up, my beauty! One more bound and we shall be home!’

They did not wait to hear more. With Rosemary clutching on to one arm, while she clasped Dumpsie with the other, they hurried for the hole in the hedge. They were only just in time. There was a clatter as the broom collapsed on the platform.

‘Crumpet! Crumpet!’ they heard Miss Dibdin’s shrill cry. With rising irritation she went on: ‘Why don’t you come when I call you?’

John and Rosemary knew why there was no answer, but they thought it better not to wait till Miss Dibdin found out.

13.‘Clumping As Ever’

IF you have ever tried to hurry, wearing Wellington boots filled with earth, mixed with as many pebbles as there are currants in a plum pudding, you will understand why John and Rosemary made such slow progress on their way home.

There had been no time to balance the extra weight in John’s pockets evenly, so that he walked in a slightly lopsided way, bent uncomfortably at the knees: but he did not dare to leave any of the extra weight behind. Away from the shelter of the station there was quite a strong breeze.

When Rosemary suggested, as tactfully as she could, that perhaps it would be better to go home the long way, round the village, so that they should attract as little attention as possible, he replied with some heat:‘I don’t care how silly I look, I’m not walking one step further than I’ve got to. My feet are killing me!’ So that was that.

As it happened, there were not many people about when they reached the village, and apart from two girls, who giggled and whispered behind their hands, and an old woman, who shook her head pityingly, they reached home without comment.

Never had they been so thankful to turn in to Uncle Zack’s gate.

‘I can’t wear gum-boots and a mac indoors,’ said John anxiously. ‘The pockets in my jeans are too small to hold anything. I don’t suppose Uncle Zack would notice, but Mrs Bodkin doesn’t miss a thing. I bet she’d spot the brickends, and make me turn my pockets out. Do you think if I ate an enormous dinner that would hold me down?’

‘If you ate the weight of two brickends, I should think even Uncle Zack would notice,’ said Rosemary. ‘I tell you what. Supposing you make some excuse to go straight to bed? You’d be safe from draughts if I piled my bedclothes on top of yours, and tucked them well in all round. We’re terribly late. The Post Office clock said half past three, so we’ve missed dinner, and it’s nearly tea time.’

‘Help!’ said John. ‘I’m starving!’

Mrs Bodkin’s crossness at their late return evaporated as soon as John asked if he could go to bed. ‘I’ve got a splitting headache,’ he said, which was perfectly true.

‘Go to bed?’ repeated Mrs Bodkin. ‘I hope to goodness you aren’t sickening for something! But it’s the best place if you’re feeling poorly. You go straight upstairs, and I’ll come up presently and take your temperature.’

Getting undressed and between the sheets presented a good deal of difficulty; but with John clutching the bed-post with both hands, and Rosemary peeling off most of his clothes, it was managed at last. Rosemary tucked him hurriedly in and went to fetch her own blankets for extra weight. She was just returning with her arms full, when a gust of wind made a downstairs door slam, and she remembered she had forgotten to close John’s bedroom door behind her. She hurried in, only to find that the window opposite was open too, and John, with bedclothes still trailing, had wafted halfway up to the ceiling. ‘Shut the door!’ he yelled. ‘There’s a through draught!’

Rosemary dropped the bundle she was carrying, banged the door to behind her, dashed to the window, slammed it shut and latched it securely. There was a‘flump’ behind her, and she turned to find John once more lying on his bed. With no draught the blankets were heavy enough to bring him down again.

‘You’d only tucked the blankets in properly one side,’ he said faintly. He lay, eyes closed, looking rather white. ‘I can’t take much more of this,’ he said. His eyes, when he opened them again, looked so worried that Rosemary put her hand over one of his which clutched the slipping blanket. He didn’t seem to mind.

‘You won’t have to,’ she said. ‘It won’t be long till morning. It’s all my fault for making that idiotic wish. Of course, I didn’t really mean it to happen. It was just one of those silly things you say sometimes.’

‘I know,’ said John. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been bad-tempered. But you can’t think how beastly this is all being. It was clever of you, the way you got me down from the roof — in the station, I mean. And thinking of the brickends and things. You’d better put those extra blankets on topof me, and tuck them well in onboth sides this time.’

Ten minutes later Mrs Bodkin came in with a tray.

‘Temperature first, tea after,’ she said briskly, and while John’s mouth was firmly closed round the thermometer, watch in hand, she looked round the room. ‘Well! I never saw such a mess! Dirt and stones all over the place! What on earth have you been up to?’

‘I’m awfully sorry,’ said Rosemary. ‘It was a … a game we’ve been playing. I’ll clear it up, every bit. I promise.’

‘You’re a bit big for mud pies, aren’t you?’

Mrs Bodkin picked up John’s clothes which were scattered about the floor. ‘And look at your trousers and your sweater! Filthy, they are! Andyour things aren’t much better,’ she added as she caught sight of Rosemary. ‘Clean clothes for both of you in the morning, and don’t you forget it!’

She peered at the thermometer through narrowed eyes, holding it now near, now far.‘Normal!’ she said at last. ‘That’s a good thing! Is your throat sore? No? Then you’ll do. I’ve brought you a pot of tea. More than you deserve, coming home at all hours! There’s some ham sandwiches and a few of those left-over rock cakes for you, Rosie; but I’ve put a nice dry biscuit for young John. Just in case,’ she added mysteriously. ‘We don’t want to take any risks, do we? He looks a bit flushed, doesn’t he?’

‘Flushed?’ growled John, when she had gone downstairs again. ‘She’d look flushed with seven blankets and two eiderdowns tucked in on top of her. I’m simply sweltering! And one “nice dry biscuit” when I’m starving!’

In the end, of course, they shared the ham sandwiches and rock cakes between them. Dumpsie was curled up at the foot of the bed, a small purring ball. Doing something so ordinary and everyday as pouring tea, and stirring in milk and sugar with the shared kitchen spoon, began to work its own gentle kind of magic, and they both began to feel better. They even got a bit giggly.

‘You’ve still got that beastly ring?’ asked John suddenly. Rosemary nodded. She felt in her pocket and held out the Golden Gew-Gaw in the palm of her hand. ‘Then for goodness’ sake, put it back in the box before you go making another crazy wish. When Dumpsie wakes up, we shall have to explain why we can’t hear her. She’ll have to invent a sign to make if she wants to speak to us.’

‘I don’t see why it should always be you in charge of the ring,’ said Rosemary.

‘Because, you twit, I’m the one who always has a pocket to put it in.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Rosemary reluctantly.

‘You can keep the paper hat if you like,’ said John.

‘All right,’ said Rosemary. She had just returned the box to John’s trouser pocket, when Uncle Zack came in.

‘Hallo, old chap! Mrs Bodkin tells me you aren’t feeling very well.’ He lowered his long body into the small chair by the bed. ‘I’m afraid I’m being rather a neglectful uncle, and leaving you both on your own most of the time; but I’ve had rather a lot of bothersome business to see to. I do hope you aren’t being bored?’

‘Bored? Good heavens, no!’ said John.

‘We’ve been much too busy,’ said Rosemary.

‘That’s a good thing,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘What have you been doing with yourselves?’

‘Oh, this and that,’ said John cautiously.

‘Exploring the old railway station mostly,’ said Rosemary. John, who was out of nudging distance, gave her a warning glance.

‘Well, I suppose there’s no harm in that, as long as you don’t do any damage,’ said Uncle Zack. They both thought guiltily of the broken glass roof. ‘Pity you aren’t well,’ he went on. ‘I’ve got to go to Broomhurst tomorrow to see my solicitor, and I’d planned an expedition for all three of us. I shall shut up shop. We might have gone to the pictures, when I’ve done my business, which won’t take long. There’s a good Western on, and Mr Sprules wanted us to go and have tea with him in his shop afterwards. I thought Mrs Bodkin would be glad to be rid of us so that she can get on with the cooking for the Sale on Saturday.’

‘I’msure I shall be all right by the morning,’ said John eagerly, beginning to sit up. Catching sight of Rosemary’s warning head-shake, he hurriedly slid under the pile of bedclothes again.

‘Well, we shall have to see how you are,’ said Uncle Zack.

‘Bother!’ said John later. ‘We ought to be spending tomorrow searching Tucket Towers for Carbonel. But I don’t see how we can say we won’t go to Broomhurst with Uncle Zack, unless I pretend I’ve still got a headache; and then Mother Boddles won’t let me go out.’

‘I think I should rather like a day off from all this magic business,’ said Rosemary, with which John rather shamefacedly agreed.

Rosemary woke early next morning. It had been an uncomfortable night. She jumped out of bed at once and ran into John’s room. He was fast asleep, but stirred when she tripped over the untidy pile of extra blankets straggling over the floor by his bed.

‘John! John!’ she said urgently. ‘How are you?’

He gave a tremendous yawn.

‘What do you mean, how am I?’ he said sleepily; then suddenly remembering the happenings of the day before, he opened his eyes wide. ‘Shut the door, just in case, and I’ll see.’

Very cautiously he climbed out of bed… and to Rosemary’s enormous relief stood squarely on the floor. A slow smile spread over his face. He jumped a few inches off the ground, and came down with a heartening thud; then he jumped half a dozen times, higher and higher, just for the pleasure of feeling himself come down again.

Dumpsie uncurled herself for a moment to watch.‘Clumping as ever!’ she said, then she tucked her nose under her tail and went to sleep again.

‘Thank goodness!’ said Rosemary. ‘Help me take my bedclothes back. We don’t want Mother Boddles finding them here and asking questions. We’d better get dressed. Clean things, remember.’

‘You’re dressed already,’ said John. ‘Why did you put that dirty old pullover on again?’

‘I haven’t put anything on,’ said Rosemary, who might be forgiven for being a bit snappish. ‘I didn’t take anythingoff last night, because you’ve got all my bedclothes. I put my coat on top of me,and the hearthrug because I was cold; but they kept slipping, and my feet stuck out.’

‘I say,’ said John. ‘What a pig I am! I just never thought of you not having any blankets. It was decent of you. I am grateful. Truly I am and I’ll never call you a silly twit again.’

‘That’s all right,’ said Rosemary. ‘I’m going to put on my best dress,’ she went on. ‘We’re going to Broomhurst with Uncle Zack. Remember? At least, I suppose they’ll think you’re well enough.’

John came down to breakfast looking so spruce and healthy, with his cheeks well scrubbed, and hair actually lying flat, that there was little difficulty in persuading his uncle that he was quite recovered. Mrs Bodkin was not convinced so easily. She took his temperature again, and on examining his chest seemed almost disappointed to find no spots; but at last she agreed that he was well enough for the day’s expedition.

‘You never know with children,’ she said to Uncle Zack. ‘Up one minute and down the next!’ which in John’s case had been only too true.

14. Gone!

THE expedition to Broomhurst was a success. Uncle Zack seemed a bit worried when he left the solicitor’s office, but he soon cheered up. From the lunch at a Chinese restaurant to the moment when the cowboy hero of the film rode off into the sunset, they both enjoyed every minute.

Tea at Mr Sprules’s shop followed, in what seemed a cave of books. By an ancient gas fire there was a clearing among the shelves, with just enough room for a desk and two chairs.

‘I’m afraid you two youngsters will have to sit on the floor. Do you think you could toast some crumpets by the fire? Plenty of butter, mind,’ said Mr Sprules.

In thoughtful, buttery silence, John and Rosemary toasted a pile of crumpets which were eaten up in no time at all. But you do not need to be told why toasted crumpets reminded them of Calidor, and the mysterious disappearance of Carbonel.

After handing down two steaming mugs of tea Mr Sprules rattled a teaspoon against a saucer and called:‘Splodger! Splodger! Where are you?’ After a pause, he went on: ‘Funny. He generally comes at a gallop for his saucer of milk, when he hears the tea things tinkle.’ From which John and Rosemary guessed that Splodger was a cat. ‘He’s a wonderful mouser. Oh, there you are, you old sinner!’

As he spoke, a large, rangy animal with patches of black and orange on his white coat came trotting out from one of the aisles between the bookcases. He stopped, and looked at the newcomers with an impudent stare, then settled down to the milk Mr Sprules had put down for him, spraying a shower of drops on the floor round the rim of the saucer as he lapped. Mr Sprules laughed.

‘You can see why he’s called “Splodger”!’ he said, and stirred the animal with his foot in a friendly way.

‘Talking of cats,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘What a lot of them there seem to be in Broomhurst. They are all over the place, dashing about and slinking round corners.’

‘Strange creatures, cats,’ said Mr Sprules thoughtfully. ‘I always feel old Splodger here could tell a thing or two, if only he could talk.’

The cat looked up from the saucer and flashed his master a bold, golden glance, then settled down to wash himself. John slipped his hand into his hip pocket, paused for a moment, then pulled an anxious face.

‘What’s the matter?’ whispered Rosemary. A discussion had started between Uncle Zack and Mr Sprules as to whether cats were more intelligent than dogs.

‘The ring, the Golden Gew-Gaw! I left the box in the pocket of my other jeans when I put clean ones on this morning …’

‘Well, it’ll still be there when we get home,’ said Rosemary comfortably. ‘But I wish we’d got it now so that we could talk to Splodger. Look how he is staring at us with his great yellow eyes!’

‘But you remember what Carbonel said about that business of not letting it “out of sight or feel”?’ said John.

‘Well, it can’t be helped,’ began Rosemary, when she was interrupted by Mr Sprules. ‘I wonder if you two would do something for me. Could you deliver a letter to Tucket Towers?’

There was nothing else to do but say:‘Of course.’

‘I came across a page that had dropped out of a battered old book Mrs Witherspoon bought the other day, and I thought she would be glad to have it.’

‘What an extraordinary building Tucket Towers is,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I suppose Colonel Witherspoon wanted to make it as much like a castle as possible, but without the discomforts.’

‘Why is it called Tucket Towers when there is only one?’ asked John.

‘It sounds grander, I suppose,’ said Mr Sprules. ‘I bet the Colonel would have added a moat, and a draw-bridge too, if it would not have been awkward for callers, and people like the postman.’ The two men laughed.

‘By the way,’ said Mr Sprules, turning to John and Rosemary. ‘You’ll find some children’s books on the shelves on the right of the street door. Go and choose one each: that is, if you would like to. They are all in pretty good condition.’

‘Whatever made you look so queer just now?’ said Rosemary as they studied the backs of the books.

‘Don’t you see?’ said John. ‘Taking Mr Sprules’s letter to Tucket Towers gives us an excuse to ring the bell. So all we’ve got to do is to think of another excuse to go inside when someone answers the door.’

‘Well, I think …’ began Rosemary. There was a sudden ‘Squark’ from Splodger. ‘Oh, puss, I’m so sorry. Did I tread on your tail? I didn’t see you down there.’

She bent down, but Splodger shrugged off her stroking hand, ran to the door leading to the street, where he looked up at her expectantly, impatiently clawing at the mat. As soon as she opened the door he went streaking down the pavement, weaving his way through the legs of passers-by with surprising speed.

‘You don’t think he heard what we were saying?’ said Rosemary.

‘I don’t suppose it would have meant anything to him if he did,’ said John. ‘I’m going to chooseTreasure Island.’

‘The Jungle Book for me,’ said Rosemary. ‘Then we can exchange afterwards.’

They all three sat in thoughtful silence on the journey home. Uncle Zack wore his worried face again.

‘Time for a quick wash and brush-up,’ he said as the car turned in to the drive. ‘It’s just about supper time, and Mrs Bodkin gets cross if I keep it waiting.’

‘Does she get cross withyou?’ said Rosemary in surprise. Uncle Zack pulled a wry face.

‘It isn’t so much what shesays. She goes about in a sort of cloud of crossness. You can’t see it, of course, but you can feel it.’

‘I know,’ said John. ‘There’s a master at school who does that, and you have to mind your p’s and q’s.’

‘Well, you’d better mind them now!’ said Uncle Zack, looking at his watch.

But no smell of cooking supper greeted them as they went indoors, and no supper was laid on the Cromwellian table. Even more important to John and Rosemary, there were no grubby jeans hanging on the back of John’s bedroom chair, where he had left them that morning. Without a word, they clattered down the stairs to the kitchen.

Dumpsie ran forward to greet them with a welcoming‘Prrrt!’ Rosemary bent down and stroked her. Mrs Bodkin was pricking sausages with a fork.

‘I know!’ she said, lifting a frowning face. ‘You want your supper, and I’m all behind and it’s not ready, but I’ve only got one pair of hands.’

‘Oh, never mind about supper,’ said John, rather to her surprise. ‘Have you seen my dirty old jeans?’

‘What do you think?’ said Mrs Bodkin. ‘I gave them a wash.’

‘Thanks awfully. But did you find a tin box in the pocket?’ Mrs Bodkin gave a sniff.

‘A medal for bravery I ought to get. I never know what my fingers are going to sink into when I go through young John’s pockets. A dead mouse it was once when you was last here. Of course I found your precious box. It’s on the dresser there. My hands was soapy, and I dropped it, and the things fell all over the place, but I put ’em all back again.’

John hurried to the dresser and fetched the box. The Golden Gew-Gaw was not there.

‘There was a ring in it too,’ said John.

‘With a big red stone,’ added Rosemary.

‘Oh yes, I forgot about that,’ said Mrs Bodkin. ‘I found it on the floor when I’d put the box on the shelf for safety. Nearly trod on it. I slipped it on my finger while I finished the wash, just to keep it safe … and then it happened. I must have come over queer. I shall have to see a doctor.’

She put a hand to her forehead and John and Rosemary gave one another an anxious glance.

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Rosemary. ‘Do sit down and tell us about it!’

Mrs Bodkin sank gratefully into the chair that John brought forward.

‘I don’t know what came over me,’ she said. ‘I’d done all the cooking, and polished most of the furniture for the Sale tomorrow, and then I thought I’d just wash your jeans through, seeing as you’ve only got one spare pair, before I had a nice sit-down. Tired, I was, with all I’d done. Well, I’d collected one or two things. You know how it is once you start, but not worth getting out the washing machine. I’d got my hands in the suds, and my back was aching, and the thinking of all that spring-cleaning wash I’d put off till you kids had gone. I remember saying to pussy here something about wishing all the dirty things were ready washed and on the line … And next thing, I looked out of the window — and they were! On the line, I mean. Stretching all the way down the garden and back. Loose covers, cushions, blankets, bedspreads … The lot! And me still with my hands in the suds, and not remembering a thing about it: not taking down the curtains even, which means getting out the step-ladder, nor hanging it all on the line or anything. It seemed done in a flash, like. A sort of fit I must have had, not remembering!’ Distractedly she waved the fork she was still holding.

‘I shouldn’t worry,’ said Rosemary soothingly. ‘I don’t suppose it will happen again.’

‘And then of course, I had to turn to and iron the blooming lot!And air the blankets so we don’t catch our deaths tonight. I’ve been at it ever since. I’m about done in.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ said John.

‘But I expect you are glad it’s all finished,’ went on Rosemary.

‘I suppose so,’ said Mrs Bodkin. ‘The things is as clean as anyone could wish, I’ll say that. But doing all that great enormous wash, and not remembering anything about it, I must be going queer in the head.’

‘Well, you seem as right as rain now,’ said John. ‘But the ring. Could we have it?’

‘Now, what did I do with it?’ said Mrs Bodkin. ‘Oh, I remember. It slipped off my finger in the soapy water and I put it on the window-sill. That’s funny, it isn’t there now!’

‘I expect it’s fallen out on to the path outside,’ said John. But search as they would, they could not find it.

‘I suppose no one could have taken it?’ said John. ‘Has anyone been to the back door?’

‘Only that Mrs Whatshername. Lives in the big house down Sheepshank Lane. Widdlespoon is it? You should have seen her hat! Enough to make a cat laugh.’

Dumpsie drew herself up in an offended way.

‘Said she couldn’t make anyone hear at the front. She wanted to know if there was one of those big black coalscuttles in the Sale. Like an old-fashioned cooking pot with a handle over the top. Well of course I don’t know. Very hoity-toity she was.’

‘Wemust find the ring,’ said John. ‘It’s valuable.’

Mrs Bodkin looked at him curiously.‘What’s a lad like you doing with a valuable ring?’

‘It’s only valuable to us,’ said Rosemary hastily. ‘It came out of a cracker.’

‘A lady like that would never bother about a trumpery cracker ring,’ said Mrs Bodkin, rising to her feet. ‘But I must get on. Sausages and a bit of fried potato it’ll have to be for your supper. And do me a favour. Don’t tell your uncle. About my funny turn, I mean. He’ll start talking again about getting someone in to help. As if I can’t manage! Now be good children, and lay the table. I’m feeling worn out, with all that work and the worry of being took bad. I’ll slip down to the doctor first thing tomorrow.’

‘The beastly ring, it’s done it again!’ said John, as they laid knives and forks on the spotless, newly washed and ironed tablecloth. ‘That’s the third mess it’s got us into.’

‘And how on earth are we going to get it back from Mrs Witherspoon? I bet she’s “the wrong hands”. She may wish something simply frightful with it.’

15. Tucket Towers

‘WEmust settle on some plan of action,’ said John, as he walked with Rosemary up the weedy drive of Tucket Towers early next morning. ‘We keep talking about it, and not deciding anything.’

‘Well, first we hand over the letter to Mrs Witherspoon. … That ought to give us a chance to see if she is wearing the Golden Gew-Gaw,’ said Rosemary … ‘And then what? That’s where we always get stuck. Last Christmas,’ she went on thoughtfully, ‘I went carol singing with Sally Simson in aid of Orphan Children’s Homes. Sometimes people asked us inside.’

‘We can’t go carol singing in April, you owl!’ said John.

‘Not carols, of course,’ said Rosemary. ‘But couldn’t we say we are collecting for Orphan Children’s Homes? And … I know! Has she any odd jobs we could do?’

‘That’s not a bad idea!’ said John. ‘And if we did get any money we really would give it to the Orphan Children.’

‘But what do we do next when we get inside?’ said Rosemary.

‘That depends on the job she gives us. Let’s wait and see. We’re nearly there.’

‘I know,’ said Rosemary. ‘I’m beginning to get a funny feeling in my inside.’

‘Me too,’ said John.

‘Don’t let’s stop for a single second, or I shan’t be brave enough to go on again.’

‘We’d better be quick and get it over,’ said John. ‘One, two, three … Go!’

At a brisk trot they crossed the weedy carriage sweep in front of the house, and ran up the steps to the front door. John tugged at the wrought-iron bell-pull. It was stiff and rusty, as though it was not used very often. Somewhere in the distance, they heard the clanging of the bell. After a long pause, during which they nearly turned tail and ran, a key grated in the lock, and the door swung open.

‘Yes? What do you want?’ said Mrs Witherspoon sharply.

‘We’ve brought a letter …’

‘Mr Sprules asked us …’

They both started to speak at the same time and then stopped. Rosemary giggled nervously.

‘Come along! Come along!’ said Mrs Witherspoon crossly.

‘Mr Sprules asked us if we would bring you this,’ said John. ‘It’s one of the missing pages of the book you bought the other day.’

‘Aha!’ said Mrs Witherspoon, in quite a different voice. ‘That is another matter. Give it to me!’

She almost snatched the envelope from John, tore it open impatiently and pulled out the yellowing page. Ignoring both children, she stood framed in the doorway as she studied the cramped print. Very upright she was, in a long black skirt and high-necked blouse. Her pale face, ringed and wrinkled like a cauliflower, was surrounded by straggling white hair. They had plenty of time to examine her fingers. She wore two plain gold rings, one was wide and the other narrow: but there was no sign of the glowing stone of the Golden Gew-Gaw.

Presently she looked up, and now she was smiling, but not at them. It was a sly, secret sort of smile.

‘This is what I’ve been waiting for!’ she said, more to herself than to John and Rosemary. ‘Thank you. That will be all, children!’

‘Oh please,’ said Rosemary. ‘We’re collecting for Orphan Children’s Homes, and we wondered if you had any odd jobs we could do?’

‘We don’t mind what it is!’ added John.

‘You mean you want to bepaid for it?’ said Mrs Witherspoon. All trace of a smile disappeared. ‘I’m not made of money, you know!’

‘Oh, only what you feel like giving us,’ said John.

‘Well, yes,’ she said after a thoughtful pause. ‘Perhaps there is something you could do. You may come inside. Wipe your feet!’

John and Rosemary could scarcely control their grins of triumph as they followed the tall gaunt figure into the hall.

‘Follow me to the kitchen,’ she said over her shoulder.

The hall looked even more dusty and shabby than it had done when they peered at it from outside. Cobwebs hung thickly from the deer’s antlers that hung over every door, and the ragged carpet nearly tripped up Rosemary as she stared about her. There was no broomstick in the umbrella stand this time.

At the end of the hall they went through a swing door covered with moth-eaten green baize. It closed behind them with a‘whoosh’. The kitchen was down a short passage on the other side. John and Rosemary just had time to notice a huge old-fashioned range, with a very small fire burning in it, and two cats sitting on the hearthrug in front.

‘Come along! Don’t loiter!’ said Mrs Witherspoon sharply. ‘The scullery is through here.’

As she spoke she opened the door into a smaller room, leading from the kitchen. The first thing they saw when they went inside was a large earthenware sink, loaded with tottering piles of unwashed dishes, and dirty saucepans.

‘I have got aleetle bit behind with the washing-up,’ said Mrs Witherspoon. ‘There’s your job for you. When it is all done you shall have a whole penny each. You will find an apron hanging over there, behind the door into the garden. I have to go and pick some herbs.’ She glanced at the printed page Mr Sprules had sent her, and smiled the same secret smile again. ‘For there is an important experiment I have to make. But I shall be back shortly to see that you’ve done your work properly.’

She opened the door, locked it behind her, and went out into the garden. There was a window over the draining board, and they watched her peering about in the overgrown flower beds.

John stood with his hands on his hips, and glowered at the pile of dirty dishes.‘Just aleetle bit behind with the washing-up!’ he mimicked. ‘She can’t have done any for weeks! I didn’t bargain for this. And one penny each. The Orphan Children won’t get very fat on that!’

‘Never mind,’ said Rosemary. ‘At least it has got us inside.’ She held her hand hopefully under a running tap. ‘No hot water either. Come on. Do stop glaring and help me move these saucepans from the sink. Put them on the floor, or anywhere out of the way. If only we’d got the ring we might have learned something from those two cats in the kitchen.’

Everyone knows that the longer washing-up is left, the harder it is to do. Some of the saucepans had clearly been left for a very long time indeed. With a good deal of clattering they cleared the sink.

‘What on earth are you staring at that little enamel thing for?’ asked John.

‘Do you think it’s an egg saucepan?’ asked Rosemary.

‘For goodness’ sake! Have we got to guess what’s been cooked in each one?’ said John.

‘Do stop being cross. There’s some bright purple runny stuff at the bottom,’ went on Rosemary. ‘Don’t you remember Mrs Witherspoon saying that she cooked her Hearing Mixture in the egg saucepan, and it was purple? Quick, get a teaspoon and pour a drop into each of my ears. That’s what she said she did, and then she could hear all cats talking.’

‘But suppose it’s just the remains of some pudding or other? Or … or even worse, some different kind of magic? It might turn you into something — well, creepy crawly!’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Rosemary uneasily. ‘But we shall have to risk it. Don’t you see? Without the ring we can’t talk to Carbonel or Calidor, or any of the other cats, and we are stuck unless we do. Hurry! Mrs Witherspoon may be back any minute.’

She rinsed a teaspoon under the tap and pushed it into John’s reluctant hand, put her head on one side and held her hair back. ‘Go on,’ she said, and took a deep breath.

Very gingerly John took the saucepan, scooped up a little of the liquid, and poured a drop into each of her ears. Rosemary raised her head. She was looking rather pale.

‘Rosie … are you all right?’ asked John anxiously. At first she did not answer; instead she lifted her hand as if to silence him. Then she ran to the kitchen door and opened it carefully, the merest crack, and stood listening. Her face broke into a smile. ‘It has worked! I can hear those two cats next door,’ she whispered. ‘But I can’t make out all they are saying. Something about a clever plan … I think.’ Then her eyes widened. ‘Help! It’s Grisana and Melissa! I recognize their voices. What on earth are they doing here?’

‘I bet they’re up to no good, whatever it is,’ said John. ‘Quick, there’s just about enough purple stuff to pour down my ears too, if you scrape the saucepan, then let’s go and talk to them.’ When Rosemary had done as he asked he went on: ‘Better make friends with them first, beforewe let on that we can understand them.’

Together they walked into the kitchen and up to the hearthrug and held out their hands to the small fire.‘Beastly cold,’ said John in a loud voice. ‘Isn’t it, pussy?’ he went on, dropping on his knees and stroking the nearest cat on the head. It happened to be Melissa.

‘You’ve got a nice warm place!’ said Rosemary to the other cat, who of course was Grisana. Grisana looked up and gave them a conceited stare.

‘Shall I scratch them, mama?’ said Melissa in a voice with a hiss behind it. ‘If there is anything I hate it is being addressed as “pussy”, as though I am a common or garden cat!’

‘They aren’t worth scratching,’ said Grisana languidly.

‘But suppose they are the two children Splodger told you about? The ones who guessed that the cat Mrs Witherspoon has imprisoned is Carbonel?’ John and Rosemary exchanged glances.

‘It doesn’t matter if they are,’ said Grisana. ‘I have already looked at their hands, and they are neither of them wearing the ring that makes them understand us. Splodger explained about that too, so I can go on telling you about the arrangement I have made with Mrs Witherspoon, and they won’t have any idea what we are talking about.’ John and Rosemary suppressed their smiles, and redoubled their stroking.

‘Do go on, you clever mama!’ said Melissa. ‘I must say this boy strokes rather well. I can’t help purring.’

‘Mrs Witherspoon has been keeping Carbonel prisoner’ because he refuses to be her witch’s cat, and she grows impatient. She has promised me that if he will not do as she wishes by moonrise tonight, and of course he won’t, she will let him go. She will turn him out of the front door of Tucket Towers, and then …’ Grisana’s purring was loud and deep.

‘And then, mama?’

‘He is mine to do with as I please!’

‘And what will you please?’ said Melissa in her sly voice.

‘When he thinks he is free, and steps out of the hall door of Tucket Towers, he shall be pounced upon by a picked troop of Broomhurst cats, who will take him prisoner in triumph back to Broomhurst, where he will be well and truly …scrodged!’ There was no trace of a purr about Grisana’s voice now, and she kneaded the hearthrug with rhythmic claws as she hissed the last word. ‘But you look sulky, daughter? Does this not please you?’

‘I don’t care a sardine tail what happens to Carbonel. It is Calidor I want humbled,’ growled Melissa.

‘Dear child,’ purred Grisana. ‘Calidorshall be humbled. That is the whole point of my plan! As soon as Calidor hears that his father has been captured and taken to Broomhurst— and we shall make quite sure that he hears at once — he will come racing to his rescue, straight into the trap I have prepared for him! We shall be waiting with a picked company, claws raised, to seize him! And then they can both be scrodged together! But come, there is a great deal to do. I must decide where sentries are to be posted tonight. Come, Melissa.’

The two cats hurried from the kitchen into the scullery, jumped up on to the draining board, smashing a dirty cup as they went, and leapt out of the window which swung backwards and forwards because the latch was broken. John and Rosemary watched them go.

‘Phew!’ said John. ‘What a wicked pair! Come on, we’ve got an awful lot to do too!’

‘Yes, but what?’ said Rosemary. ‘How can we stop this beastly plan?’

‘We must get word to Calidor about the moonrise business, somehow. But first we must search Tucket Towers until we find Carbonel. Now’s our chance while Mrs Witherspoon is in the garden. Come on!’

They hurried down the passage and through the baize door, and looked cautiously round the hall. There was no one there. The only sound was the ticking of the grandfather clock. Small swirls of dusty motes danced in the early morning sunshine, which slanted through the windows on either side of the front door.

‘Let’s start with the first room on the right, and go through every one in turn,’ said John. ‘Shall we separate? You do downstairs, and I’ll go upstairs?’

‘No fear!’ said Rosemary. ‘I’m coming with you!’ She ducked to avoid a swinging spider as she followed him through the first door.

They tiptoed cautiously from one room to another. Some were quite empty. Only the less faded patches of wallpaper showed where pictures and furniture had once been. In others, what furniture there was was shrouded in dust sheets.

‘How creepy armchairs and sofas look, all muffled up in white!’ whispered Rosemary. ‘As though they’re … sort of crouching!’

‘Holding out their arms to pounce,’ said John, and they moved a little nearer to one another.

But uneasy though they were, they searched thoroughly, opening every door, and looking inside every cupboard, even examining the back stairs, and wherever they went they found moth-eaten carpets, and faded hangings… but no Carbonel.

‘We’d better try upstairs,’ said John when they had searched the last room.

Here the rooms all led off the gallery which ran round three sides of the hall… but they proved as empty and uninhabited as the others. The sun had gone in, and the silence seemed even heavier here than below, broken only by the occasional scutter of a mouse, or the faint buzz of an imprisoned fly as it bumbled against a window-pane.

One room showed signs of having been recently used. The bed was made, and a scatter of large hairpins lay on the dressing-table. In the wardrobe was a tall, pointed black hat.

‘Miss Dibdin’s bed-sitter!’ said John. ‘That’s one of the road-mender’s cones.’

Another large room, with an unmade four-post bed, they decided belonged to Mrs Witherspoon. They searched in bedrooms, bathrooms, airing cupboards and clothes closets.

‘Not a sign of Carbonel!’ said Rosemary sadly, when they had closed the door.

‘I can’t think of anywhere else to look,’ said John.

‘Wait a minute!’ said Rosemary. ‘What’s that?’ She pointed to a narrow door in a dark corner of the gallery that they had not noticed.

‘Another airing cupboard by the size of it,’ said John. He lifted the latch and peered inside. ‘I bet it’s …’ He broke off. ‘Rosie! It’s a little spiral staircase! How super! It must lead to the top of the tower. Of course, that’s where Carbonel must be hidden! Come on!’

Stooping low they crept through the door. It closed behind them with a‘snick’ that made them jump uncomfortably, and made the stairs so dark that they had to feel their way. Up they went, till a glimmer of light from a small lancet window showed a landing at the top. This was cluttered with junk. There were bulging boxes and bags, and piles of cracked china. An old parrot’s cage was balanced on a broken chair. Through all this a narrow path led to a small door, heavily studded with nails.

‘I bet this is it!’ said John. He tried the wrought-iron handle, but of course it was locked.

‘Carbonel!’ called Rosemary cautiously through the keyhole. ‘Carbonel! Are you there?’

There was a moment’s tense silence, and then a faint but familiar voice answered: ‘Who calls my name? I hoped I should be spared the humiliation of being recognized.’

‘But it’s us! John and Rosemary! So you don’t have to be humiliated. I’m so glad we’ve found you at last!’

‘John and Rosemary? Is it really you?’

‘Can you come nearer the keyhole?’ said John. ‘We can scarcely hear you.’

‘Alas, no,’ sighed Carbonel. ‘Not content with locking me in, the Witch Woman has set a guard over me, here inside. I am ringed round with strange creatures that never take their eyes from me. I have never seen anything like them before.’

As he spoke John and Rosemary heard a twittering sound they seemed to recognize, a twittering that rose and fell.

‘What are they like?’ asked John through the keyhole.

‘Square,’ said Carbonel.

‘With a leg at each corner?’ said Rosemary.

‘And paws so hard and sharp they might be made of iron,’ added Carbonel.

‘And four eyes. Two at the back and two at the front?’

‘You describe them exactly,’ said Carbonel. ‘Have you seen such creatures before?’

‘It’s the Scrabbles!’ said John and Rosemary with one voice. And as though the creatures heard and recognized Rosemary, the twittering rose excitedly.

‘They squat round me in a circle day and night,’ went on Carbonel when the noise had died down again.

‘Listen,’ said John. ‘The door is locked and we haven’t got the key so we can’t let you out yet. You are safe until moonrise tonight. Grisana has hatched a plot with Mrs Witherspoon.’

‘Those two wicked creatures together? That is bad.’

‘But somehow we will get news through to Calidor.’

‘My son Calidor?’ said Carbonel with surprise.

‘As soon as he heard you had disappeared he went back to Fallowhithe to restore order …’

‘Dumpsie came to tell him,’ interrupted Rosemary. ‘She came all that long way with a hurt paw …’

‘Calidor has gone home? Then it is worth all this!’ said Carbonel.

‘What’s the matter?’ said John. Rosemary was tugging at his sleeve.

‘Voices in the hall. And I think they’re angry.’

‘We can’t stay any longer,’ said John through the keyhole. ‘But we are going to get help. So cheer up.’

‘And don’t give in!’ said Rosemary.

‘Give in!’ exclaimed Carbonel. ‘Never will I become slave to a common Witch Woman!’ At this the twittering of the Scrabbles grew so loud that his voice was drowned.

John and Rosemary turned and felt their way down the spiral staircase.

16. Middle Magic

WHEN JOHN and Rosemary reached the gallery they realized that, for the moment, escape was impossible. Mrs Witherspoon was standing in the hall at the foot of the stairs. There was no doubt that the voices they had heard were angry. In the open doorway stood Miss Dibdin: her sensible shoes planted squarely on the mat, a black cone on her head, and the broom trailing from one hand. There was nothing to do but wait and see what happened, and hope they would not be seen. They crouched down on the floor and peered through the carved rail that ran round the gallery.

Mrs Witherspoon, with Gullion on her shoulder, held a large china bowl in one hand, and in the other a bunch of leafy sprays, which they supposed she had just picked from the garden.

‘I thought I had made it quite clear, Dorothy, that I did not want you back at Tucket Towers!’ she said harshly.

‘I only came to fetch the toothbrush I left behind. I can hardly imagine that you want to keep it?’ replied Miss Dibdin coldly.

‘I suppose you came hopping along on your precious broomstick, like some monstrous great flea!’ said Mrs Witherspoon, laughing scornfully.

‘Well, that’s more than you can do!’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘I don’t believe you have even tried to make a Broom Magic.’

‘You have no idea what I can do,’ said Mrs Witherspoon, ‘or you’d be green with envy! So like you to imagine that a broomstick is the only way of flying. You’ve no imagination. And as for plain ignorance …! Why, I don’t believe you even know the Three Orders of Magic!’

‘Well, if you’re so clever you can tell me. What are they?’ said Miss Dibdin sulkily.

‘First there is Lower Magic,’ replied Mrs Witherspoon in an arrogant voice. ‘That means small, easy, conjuring tricks, such as the making of Flying Philtres, Disappearing Drops and so on. Then there is Middle Magic, more difficult by far, for it deals with Time and Space and Tides …’ Hereher voice faded. She stared at Miss Dibdin with a faraway gaze.

‘Well?’ said Miss Dibdin impatiently. ‘And the third …?’

Mrs Witherspoon shook herself, and gave a great sigh.‘The Supreme Magic? That is only for the wisest of the Sinister Sisterhood. Perhaps even I shall never know the beauty and the power of it. But with Gullion’s help I do my best. So full of ideas is my little toadlet! You remember the field I sold the other day? Well, the last thing I want is a sprawl of houses spoiling the view from my windows.’

‘Then why did you sell it for building?’ asked Miss Dibdin.

‘Because I wanted more money. But Gullion has told me exactly what to do. He whispered a deliciously wicked scheme to me on my pillow last night.’ Mrs Witherspoon laughed shrilly. ‘It is just a matter of dropping the right herbs in the cement mixer, dancing round it at midnight, chanting the right words… .’

‘And what good will that do?’ said Miss Dibdin scornfully.

‘You mean whatevil, dear?’ said Mrs Witherspoon. ‘Just this. What the builders build by day, will fall with a crash by night! Till at last they will become so discouraged they will give it up and go away.’

‘All this fine talk about that nasty toad! I don’t believeyou know any more about magic than I do,’ said Miss Dibdin.

‘Do I not?’ said Mrs Witherspoon sweetly. She drew herself up to her full height. ‘Then you shall see for yourself! Watch, and here and now I will make a Middle Magic! I told you how sad I was that Tucket Towers had lost its splendour, as I knew it first as a young bride, before its treasureswere sold and its buildings began to crumble?’

Miss Dibdin rolled her eyes, as much as to say she had heard it only too often, but Mrs Witherspoon took no notice. She raised her thin arms, and twirled round on her long thin feet, so that her black skirt flowed round her.‘Watch, my little Dibdin,’ she cried. ‘Watch, and you shall see a Middle Magic!’

In spite of herself Miss Dibdin stepped eagerly forward, her hands clasped. The broom lay forgotten on the floor. There was no need to tell John and Rosemary to watch. They clung to the posts of the carved rail with both hands, and craned their heads through the gap between till their ears hurt.

Mrs Witherspoon was moving about the hall below, muttering under her breath; and as she muttered the tick of the grandfather clock seemed to grow louder. First she pulled a little rickety table out from the wall until it stood in front of the clock.

In the middle of the table she placed Gullion, having first planted a kiss on his warty head; and beside Gullion she placed the china bowl. High up in the gallery, on the opposite side, John and Rosemary could see her every movement.

‘Front row of the dress circle!’ whispered John. Rosemary ignored him. The knuckles of both her hands were white with concentration. They could see that the china bowl was filled with a dark liquid which crinkled and dimpled as though it was boiling, although there was no flame underneath.

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‘Mutter … mutter!’ went Mrs Witherspoon. ‘Tick … Tock!’ went the grandfather clock, each stroke now echoing like stones falling down a well. Suddenly she pulled seven different leaves from the spray she held, and began dancing round the table from right to left. Seven times she swept round, pausing to curtsey to the clock as she completed each circle, and at the same time dropping a different leaf into the bowl, still muttering as she went. When six leaves were floating in the mixture, she stirred it with a bony finger. Then she flung up her arms and chanted in a solemn voice:

‘Whirling!

Swirling!

Twirling Time!

Listen to my magic rhyme.

Twixt the tick and the tock

Of the grandfather clock, Leave the present behind!

Fifty summers unwind.

That Tucket Towers

And I may be,

What once we were

For all to see!’

And suddenly the tick of the clock grew unbearably loud.‘TICK … TOCK … TICK … TOCK … TICK …’ But just before the third TOCK, whirling round for the seventh time, Mrs Witherspoon dropped the seventh leaf into the bowl. As she did so the dark liquid fizzed and bubbled and boiled over, and the grandfather clock went mad. The hands whizzed wildly backwards, with such a clamour of striking, and frantic beating of TICKS and TOCKS, that John and Rosemary let go the rails they had been clutching, and crouched down with their hands over their ears. When the racket subsided they opened their eyes again.

The only thing that seemed the same was Miss Dibdin. She stood, wide-eyed with wonder, looking rather forlorn in her shabby old mackintosh. The hall was brilliantly lit by a sudden burst of sunshine. It shone on a thick red carpet, on the gold frames of the massive pictures now hanging on the walls. It gleamed softly on the polish of the solid furniture which stood round the walls, and twinkled on the crystal chandelier which hung from the ceiling, and on silver candlesticks and salvers. There was not a cobweb to be seen.

In front of the grandfather clock, where old Mrs Witherspoon had stood in her rusty black skirt, was a slender young woman in a short pink dress. Her eyes were dark and lustrous, and her raven-black hair fell softly on either side of smooth cheeks, that were bright with excitement.

‘It has worked! It has really worked!’ cried the young woman, flinging her arms wide.

‘Excuse me,’ said Miss Dibdin in a puzzled voice. ‘But what has worked? And who are you?’

‘Why, who do you think, my poor old Dibdin? I’m Dulcie Witherspoon, as I used to be fifty years ago. It’s worked! It’s worked! I am young once more!’ She danced round the hall. ‘And everything is back again in its proper place. Just as it used to be! Who is the best witch now?’ she asked in a mocking voice.

Miss Dibdin stood with downcast head. Something shining trickled down her cheeks and fell with a plop on the toe of one of her sensible shoes.

‘You are the best witch, Dulcie,’ she said at last. But young Mrs Witherspoon was not listening. She was running round the hall on slender silk-clad legs, flinging open door after door and exclaiming with delight at what she saw inside each room. The grandfather clock was ticking lazily once more, as though nothing unusual had happened.

‘All the precious things I had to sell, back in their right places again! Even the crystal chandelier, and my darling piano! How I shall play and play! Gullion, my pet,’ she said, picking him up and whirling him round. ‘Now, you shall have your bath in a silver bowl every day!’

‘I see you did not have electric light fifty years ago. I suppose you’ll have to make do with candles,’ said Miss Dibdin with a sniff.

‘Oh don’t be such a spoil-sport, Dorothy!’

‘And it’s all very well whisking all these things back again, but what are the people who bought them going to say when they find they have disappeared? Stolen, they are!’ went on Miss Dibdin. ‘Why, you are no more than a common thief! And don’t forget, I only have your word for it that you really are Dulcie Witherspoon of Tucket Towers. Who else is going to believe you?’

‘Really, Dorothy! You only say that because you’re jealous,’ said young Mrs Witherspoon, stamping her slender foot in anger. ‘I wish you’d go back to your station. You’re just a source of irritation!’

There was a second’s pause, and then suddenly … Miss Dibdin was no longer there! Where she had been standing was nothing but a wisp of smoke, which quickly melted into the shadows of the rafters.

Mrs Witherspoon raised startled hands, fingers spread, palms outwards. There, twisted round to the inside of her left hand winked the crimson stone of the Golden Gew-Gaw.

‘Good gracious!’ she said, as she thought to the empty air. ‘I wonder how that happened?’

John and Rosemary could have told her.‘She must have been wearing it all the time,’ whispered John.

‘But with the stone twisted round so that no one should see it,’ said Rosemary. ‘Did you see it wink after poor Miss Dibdin had been wished away?’

‘In the mocking way it does when it has tricked you,’ said John.

‘Well, off I go round the house!’ said Mrs Witherspoon, who, although she was fifty years younger, seemed not to have lost the habit of talking to herself.

‘So much to explore! So much to do! And my darling Gullion shall come too, so he shall,’ And scooping up the toad she went dancing away with a click of her high heels.

‘Quick, now’s our chance!’ said John as the dining-room door closed behind her.

They scurried down the stairs, the thick carpet muffling their footsteps, and ran towards the open front door.

‘Miss Dibdin has left her broom behind,’ said John. ‘I felt quite sorry for her when she saw she was beaten, and Mrs Witherspoon was crowing over her.’

‘So did I,’ said Rosemary. ‘Let’s take the broom back to her.’ She picked it up, and they ran out into the sunshine.

17. Up and Away!

‘WE shall have to stir our stumps if we’re going home by the station,’ said John.

‘I know,’ said Rosemary. ‘We promised we’d help Mother Boddles with the teas at the Sale this afternoon, and we mustn’t let her down.’

‘But how on earth are we going to get to Fallowhithe and back in time? Wemust tell Calidor about Carbonel, Grisana and Mrs Witherspoon. It’ll take hours to walk all that way, and we haven’t enough money for a bus.’

‘Let’s get rid of the broom first, anyway,’ said Rosemary. ‘Ow! It nearly tripped me up! Here, you can carry it.’ She passed the broom to John.

‘There must be a way to the field path somewhere round here at the side of the house.’

They ran under an archway, across what had once been a stable yard, and through a broken-down gate. On the other side, they could just see the ghost of a path which wound through the clump of trees they had seen from the road; beyond where the field began, it petered out.

‘Ow!’ said John, as he rubbed his shin in his turn. ‘The beastly broom nearly trippedme up! Almost as though it did it on purpose. I say, you don’t think it wants us to …’ They stood still and looked at one another.

‘To fly on it? Well, it does seem a bit to silly towalk,’ said Rosemary.

‘Come on, let’s try! After all, it only hops.’ John stood astride the broom as he spoke. ‘Get on behind, and hold on to my waist.’

Rosemary obeyed. Then she said:‘Well, go on! Tell it where to go to.’

‘Take us to the station!’ commanded John in a loud and lordly voice.

They waited, but nothing happened.

‘You may have to say it in rhyme, like the Gew-Gaw wishes, and Mrs Witherspoon’s Middle Magic,’ said Rosemary. ‘And I expect you’d better be polite. Wait a minute, I believe I can remember what Miss Dibdin said to it the day we saw her ride away from Tucket Towers. Something like this:

“To the Ladies’ Waiting Room”.’

She stopped, and thought for a minute, and then went on with a rush:

‘ “Kindly take us, noble broom”!’

At once, the handle of the broom began to quiver. The quiver grew to a rapid vibration, then it seemed to gather itself together and leapt into the air. Caught off her guard, Rosemary nearly fell off. She just had time to clutch John round the waist as the broom sailed six feet up into the air, and down again.

‘Stick your feet out in front!’ yelled John, as the broom hit the ground with a jolt, only to bounce once more into the air again. ‘Wheee!’ he shouted. ‘This is super!’

Up and down went the broom, gaining height and speed with every bound.

‘It’s like the merry-go-round at the fair, only it goes straight and much faster!’ shouted Rosemary. ‘We shall get to the station in no time.’

Up the gentle slope of the field bounced the broom and there was the station in front of them. It seemed to wobble towards them with surprising speed, and it looked increasingly solid and hard to land on as it came closer.

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‘Hold tight!’ shouted John. ‘We’re coming in to land!’

Rosemary squeezed her eyes shut, and with a jolt and a clatter they pan-caked on to the platform, just outside the Ladies’ Waiting Room. They rose rather shakily to their feet. The broom, apparently lifeless once more, lay between them on the ground.

‘Whew! That was quite a ride!’ said John. ‘Hallo, there’s Mattins.’

The grey cat was sitting with drooping head by the remains of the broken seat.

‘Whatever has happened to your poor whiskers?’ said Rosemary. ‘They’ve gone all crinkly.’ Mattins lifted his head with a jerk.

‘She plaited them,’ he snapped, with an angry toss of his head towards Tucket Towers.

‘But whatever for?’ asked Rosemary.

‘As a punishment, because without her permission, I told Grisana about the black cat she is keeping prisoner. When I managed to get my whiskers un-plaited, they were like this, and I can’t get them straight again.’

‘But didn’t Grisana stick up for you?’ asked John.

‘Not she! She laughed fit to burst when she saw my poor whiskers. I’ve done with both of them, Grisana and the Witch Woman. I’m really sorry I told tales about Crumpet. But I was angry with him when I heard him telling you about this business of being a royal animal, and he hadn’t trusted me enough to tell me too. I came to see if this one would take me on instead.’ He nodded towards the Waiting Room.

‘She’s not much of a witch, but I’m not much of a cat, not with whiskers like this. I knew she was catless now Crumpet has gone. But even that’s no good. She says she’s giving up witching. You can ask her for yourselves. She’s in there.’ He nodded once more to the open door behind him.

John picked up the broom and marched into the Ladies’ Waiting Room with Rosemary at his side. Miss Dibdin was sitting crouched on the floor by the empty fireplace, with her head in her hands. Rosemary tiptoed up to her.

‘Miss Dibdin,’ she said softly. ‘Do please cheer up.’

‘Go away!’ she replied, without looking up. ‘Whoever you are.’

‘It’s us, John and Rosemary. We’ve brought your broom back for you. You left it behind at Tucket Towers.’

‘Well, I don’t want it,’ said Miss Dibdin sourly. She looked up miserably at the two children. ‘You don’t mean to say yousaw it happen?Me being bundled off like that by Dulcie Witherspoon’s magic! Sohumbling.’

They nodded, unwilling to say anything that might increase her unhappiness.‘It’s no good,’ she went on. ‘I’m giving it all up. Some people are good at one thing and some at another. Well, I’m no good at witching, and Dulcie is.’

‘Like me being no good at football,’ said John. ‘And Tony Wilkins is, although he doesn’t try nearly so hard.’ Miss Dibdin nodded understandingly.

‘And just look at my furniture!’ she went on with a wave of her hand. ‘I bought one or two things to make it a bit more comfortable. I had to do something about it when Dulcie turned me out of Tucket Towers.’

John and Rosemary looked round. As well as the packing case and the station bench, there was an armchair with the stuffing coming out, propped up with what looked like a telephone directory. In a corner on the floor there was a mattress covered with a rug.

‘But whatever’s happened to them?’ said Rosemary. ‘They are all … shadowy!’

‘You can see right through them!’ said John.

‘I know that!’ said Miss Dibdin irritably. ‘I thought if someone came and found out I had settled in here, I might get into trouble for trespassing on the station; but if no one couldsee my furniture they would never know, so I planned to make everything invisible, except to me. But I couldn’t even get a simple spell like that right! I looked it up in my notes — but I must have done something wrong, as usual. Turned over two pages by mistake, probably — and they came out onlyhalf invisible. I don’t feel really comfortable somehow, sitting on a chair you can see through.’

‘Is that why you’re sitting on the floor?’ asked John. Miss Dibdin nodded. ‘But the broom,’ he went on. ‘What shall we do with it?’

‘Whatever you like,’ Miss Dibdin replied impatiently.

‘Then can we keep it?’ asked Rosemary eagerly.

‘If you want to,’ said Miss Dibdin with a shrug. She turned and patted the broom where it lay beside her on the floor. ‘The nearest thing I got to a bit of real magic was riding it, even if it did only hop. If I could only fly, just once, high in the air, with the clouds trying to keep up beneath me, and fields and houses slipping away miles below! What witty things I should say to the birds when they cheeked me. If I could do it just once, I could give up the rest quite cheerfully!’ She broke off with a sigh. ‘It isn’t much to ask, but it’s no good. If I hadn’t left my reading glasses behind at Fairfax Market and could see my notes properly, it might all have been different,’ she mumbled.

‘Whereare your notes?’ asked Rosemary. ‘I can read without spectacles!’

‘Miss Dibdin pointed with a fat finger to an untidy pile of loose sheets of paper lying in a corner. Rosemary picked them up and thumbed them through. Her eyes were very bright, and her cheeks were flushed.

‘What are you doing?’ asked John. But she motioned him not to interrupt. ‘Here we are,’ she said at last. ‘ “To make a besom fly where it shall be commanded.” ’ With a frowning face, she read the instructions through to herself, looking at the broom from time to time, as though checking various points.

‘Did you brew the mixture at the full moon?’ she asked Miss Dibdin.

‘Of course. A beautiful green steam it gave off.’

‘We know, John saw it,’ said Rosemary crisply. ‘And did you boil the tape in the liquid while the wind was nor’-nor’-east, so that it rose three times?’

‘Miss Dibdin nodded. ‘And picked the twigs just before the church clock struck midnight,’ she added. ‘It’s the twigs that hold the magic.’

Rosemary peered at the untidy bundle at the end of the broom handle. She could still read‘Nostradamus Ltd. Fancy Goods’ printed on the tape which secured it to the handle. She looked at the notes again.

‘But you’ve tied it with the wrong knot!’ she said. ‘You’ve made it the ordinary granny kind. ‘There’s a diagram here showing how it should be done.’

Miss Dibdin looked where Rosemary’s finger pointed at the closely written page.

‘That?’ she said. ‘Oh dear! I hadn’t realized it was a diagram. I thought it was just an idle bit of doodling! Oh silly me!’

Rosemary began to untie the knot.

‘What are you doing now?’ asked John again. Rosemary ignored him. Without looking up from the diagram she said briskly: ‘While I re-tie the string, properly this time, I have to say the magic words. When I come to the last twist but one, John, I shall nod, then you must put your thumb on the knot so that I can make it really firm.’

‘I must, must I?’ he said with a grin. ‘Who’s being bossy now?’

Rosemary looked up.‘Don’t you see? If it really flies high this time, the broom can take us to Fallowhithe twice as quickly as any other way! Are you ready? Then I’m going to begin the spell.’

Her fingers took the two ends of the ribbon, and twisted and twined them exactly according to the diagram, and at the same time she chanted in a singsong voice:

‘Fly-by-night,

And fly-by-day.

What I command,

You must obey.

Whither or thither,

Hither and yon,

Whoever bestraddles you,

Carry them on,

Up and over, wherever they will.

Do as you’re bid. Their wishes fulfil.’

And as she said‘fulfil’, she nodded, and John placed his thumb squarely on the knot, and she gave a final twist and tug to the ribbon.

Even through the ball of his thumb John felt the quiver of the broom’s response, even more strongly than when they had flown across the field. For a moment, there was a restless stirring among the twigs, and then they lay still.

‘I say!’ said John, gazing at Rosemary with respect.

‘My dear, you did it beautifully!’ breathed Miss Dibdin, who had watched the proceedings with her hands clasped under her chin to control her rising excitement. But Rosemary did not seem to hear either of them. She was standing with the broom in her hands, wrapped in her own thoughts.

‘Rosie!’ said John. ‘I say, Rosie!’ he repeated, and as she still took no notice he gave her shoulder a pat. ‘Wake up! What’s the matter with you?’ Rosemary gave herself a little shake, and turned to John with rather a wobbly smile.

‘Come on. Let’s see if it will fly with us to Fallowhithe!’

‘To Fallowhithe?’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘Oh, please, may I come too?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Rosemary doubtfully.

‘Is the broom strong enough to take all of us?’ said John.

‘The magic is young, and should be powerful,’ said Miss Dibdin eagerly.

‘You said if you could fly high, just once, on the broomstick, you’d stop this witching business for good. If we say you can come, will you promise to be sensible and give it all up?’ said John.

‘By the witch of Endor, and Solomon’s Ring,’ said Miss Dibdin, making a curious flickering movement with her hands, ‘I promise to burn my notes and return to Fairfax Market! That is a very solemn oath.’ She gave a sigh. ‘Being sensible is so dull! But never mind that. Come, come, what are we waiting for? Have you thought what to say when you tell the broom what you want it to do? She turned to Rosemary, who nodded.

‘Then let us mount!’ said Miss Dibdin, adding, ‘Mattins! Guard the Waiting Room while we are gone.’

They all three stood astride the broom, first Rosemary, then John, and Miss Dibdin at the back.

‘Go on, say it!’ said John, as Rosemary paused. She lifted her head high, and in a loud, clear voice said:

‘To Fallowhithe please will you fly.

Not hopping, but high in the sky,

To land where Calidor is standing,

And please to make a careful landing!’

‘So efficient! She thinks of everything,’ breathed Miss Dibdin.

‘Up!’ cried Rosemary. ‘Up and away!’

The broom rose gently in the air.

‘Look out! Duck!’ yelled John, as without warning it shot through the doorway of the Ladies’ Waiting Room, out into the daylight, circling up and up into the air, until Highdown Station looked no bigger than a toy below them.

18. The Duel

‘WONDERFUL! Wonderful!’ sang Miss Dibdin, as the broom, sloping steeply, circled higher and higher. Up and up it went, the wind singing in its twigs and whipping Rosemary’s hair out behind her. After a dozen turns she called breathlessly:

‘Don’t you think we’re high enough, John? You’re hanging on to my waist, and Miss Dibdin is hanging on to your waist, and if I stop hanging on to the broom handle, we shall all three slither off the end! I can’t … hold … on … much longer!’

‘Then tell the broom what you want it to do!’ shouted Miss Dibdin. ‘Showing off, that’s what it’s doing. You have to be firm with young flying besoms, and let ’em know who’s master.’

‘Down broom! Down a little!’ commanded Rosemary desperately. ‘And then straight on to Fallowhithe, and hurry!’

At once the broom tipped the other way, so suddenly that John and Miss Dibdin nearly catapulted over Rosemary’s head, then it straightened out, settling down to a steady forward flight.

‘I say, I think I can steer it a little by pressing one knee or the other against the handle!’ said Rosemary.

‘The station is right behind us!’ joined in Miss Dibdin. ‘And we’re coming up to Tucket Towers. How thrilling. And I do believe that’s Dulcie Witherspoon in the garden. I can see her pink frock. Oh, I do hope she sees us! Dulcie! Dulcie!’ she shouted. ‘Coo-ee! Look at meflying up here!’

‘Don’t call her,’ said John curtly, turning so abruptly to frown at Miss Dibdin that the broom rocked perilously.

‘Do sit still!’ said Rosemary crossly.

‘Well, we don’t want Mrs Witherspoon knowing where we’re going. She might find out and start interfering,’ said John, facing squarely front once more.

‘Oh, very well,’ said Miss Dibdin in a resigned voice.

As they flew over the clump of trees growing beside the house, the rooks rose in a protesting cloud, and then settled down again. Through the overhanging boughs, here and there, they could see the drive leading up to Tucket Towers, the crumpled humps that were the roofs and the tower itself which stood up like a warning finger, where Carbonel sat patiently waiting. When they flew over the pink blob which was Mrs Witherspoon, Miss Dibdin gave a sudden chuckle.

‘What are you laughing at?’ called Rosemary over her shoulder.

‘Oh, I was … just thinking how surprised Dulcie would be if shedid see us. But of course there is no reason why she should look up, is there?’ She chuckled again.

‘Bags I sit in front and steer coming back!’ said John. ‘It’s simply super! You can see the fields and woods and houses down below, like your bed-cover, Rosie. You know, the patchwork one.’

‘And the roads like white ribbons!’ said Rosemary.

‘There’s the motorway to Fallowhithe with streams of cars and lorries, looking like beetles! That greyish, pinkish smudge must be the town,’ said John.

‘But surely you can tell me why it’s so important that Dulcie shouldn’t know why you are going to Fallowhithe?’ said Miss Dibdin.

John told her about Carbonel and Calidor, and Grisana’s wicked scheme. But he made no mention of the purple cracker, although he began to feel uncomfortable about it.

‘Do you mean to tell me that my dear pussididdlums is aroyal cat? I always thought there was something special about him! And poor Carbonel! Imagine being a prisoner of Dulcie’s! Of course I forgive Crum … I mean Prince Calidor for running away. If there is anything I can do to help … Oh dear, I do wish I hadn’t …’ she stopped.

‘Hadn’t what?’ asked John. But before Miss Dibdin could answer, Rosemary, who had been looking anxiously forwards, said: ‘There’s a great bank of cloud in front. It would take ages to go round it.’

‘Then we’d better go straight through if it will save time,’ said John.

The swirling cloud swallowed them up and the broom ploughed on and on; but, no longer able to see anything but the surrounding mist, they could not tell at what speed they were flying. The silence was complete. There was not so much as the beat of a bird’s wing.

‘It’s like being wrapped in cotton-wool,’ said John.

‘I shall be jolly glad when we’re out in the sunshine again. Nothing but grey swirling cloud everywhere. It’s creepy,’ went on Rosemary.

‘Hush!’ said Miss Dibdin suddenly. ‘Quiet, I can hear something!’

They all three listened. Far away, but coming nearer and nearer was the unmistakable sound of a bicycle bell.‘There it is again, much nearer!’ said Rosemary.

‘But it can’t be a bicycle bell! Not up here!’ cried John incredulously.

‘Oh dear, I’m afraid it is,’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘It’s Dulcie Witherspoon on her tricycle!’

‘But tricycles can’t fly!’ said Rosemary.

‘Hers could,’ said Miss Dibdin sourly. ‘If she made the right magic, and she might. She said I had no imagination because I thought only brooms could fly. And now she is following us, and it’s all my fault. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known about Carbonel and Calidor. But you didn’t tell me till I’d done it.’

‘Done what?’ asked Rosemary.

‘You wouldn’t let me call to Dulcie when we were flying over Tucket Towers,’ went on Miss Dibdin sadly. ‘I did so want her to see me really flying, so I pulled a button off my coat and dropped it on top of her as we passed.’ (The buttons on her coat were very large and black.)

‘Help!’ said John. ‘Well, we shall just have to hope we can go faster than she can, and escape her that way.’

The bicycle bell rang again, and it sounded much nearer. Rosemary clapped the handle of the broom with her knees, and made encouraging noises with her tongue, and for a short time it increased its pace, only to sink back again to the original speed.

‘We must be a pretty heavy load for it,’ said John. ‘I suppose it’s only meant to carry one person really.’

‘The noise of the bell is getting louder and louder,’ said Rosemary. ‘It must be quite near!’

‘There’s a dark shape coming towards us through the mist!’ said John, who was looking over his shoulder. And as he spoke, through the cloud behind them came a strange sight: young Mrs Witherspoon on her tricycle, crouched low over the handlebars and pedalling fast. Her black hair was down andstreaming behind her. She was not aware of the flying broom and its three passengers, until she was nearly on top of them; then she braked so sharply that the tricycle reared and she had to stand up on the pedals. Then, adjusting her pace to theirs, as it righted itself, she drew alongside. Gullion,immovable as ever, was sitting in the basket in front.

‘Well! Well! Well!’ she said, laughing heartily as she shook back her long hair. ‘If it isn’t Dorothy Dibdin, actuallyflying on her broom! Though I see someone else is in control. You there in front! Why, if it isn’t one of those deceitful children! And bless me, you are the other!’ shewent on, turning to John. ‘Collecting for Orphan Children indeed! Well, you won’t get your two pennies from me, that’s certain! So the rooks were right. They warned me that something strange was flying overhead. So did Gullion, and something hard hit me on the forehead.’ (Miss Dibdin beamedat this.) ‘And so I came up to see what it was, and it’s only you! And where are you off to?’

‘That’s our affair,’ said John shortly.

‘We have no intention of telling you!’ said Miss Dibdin haughtily.

‘As if I care,’ said Mrs Witherspoon, with a toss of her head. ‘But wherever it is, I think … yes, I think, I shall stop you from going there!’

‘Whatever for?’ asked Rosemary. ‘We simply must get to Fallowhithe!’ John’s warning ‘Shut up, Rosie!’ was too late.

‘So that’s where you want to go!’ the young witch replied, with a mocking laugh. ‘What a pity you will never get there! I shall stop you, just to show the power of my magic!’

‘You can’t stop us,’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘The besom is our servant, not yours!’

‘But I can muddle and confuse it, so that it doesn’t know north from south, or up from down! And I can bewitch your young friend in front who seems to be in control; she is twice the witch that you are, Dorothy Dibdin. I can see that with half an eye.’

‘Don’t you dare touch Rosie!’ shouted John. But Mrs Witherspoon only laughed.

‘Look out and hold tight,’ whispered Miss Dibdin. ‘I don’t know what she’s up to, but be ready for anything!’

As she spoke the young witch bent over her handlebars. Pedalling hard and fast, with twinkling knees, she dived under the broom, came up the other side and circled over them, so low that they had to duck to avoid a blow from her high-heeled shoes. They barely had time to look up again before she skimmed under and over once more, this time from head to tail. Over and under she went again and again, and as she circled round and round, she chanted something, the words of which were blown away by the speed of her going.

‘Something is happening!’ said Rosemary anxiously. ‘It feels as though she is twisting an invisible thread round my arms and legs … Help! It’s binding me to the broom … I can scarcely move! And the broom won’t do as it’s told any longer! What shall I do!’ she cried desperately.

The broom, which had been flying as straight as an arrow, was faltering uncertainly now, as though it had lost its bearings. Under cover of Mrs Witherspoon’s mocking laughter, Miss Dibdin said: ‘Keep your heads down and listen to me. I’ve got an idea. You remember I told you, it is the bundle of twigs at the end of a broom that give it its power to fly?’

‘There’s a bundle of twigs tied on to the back of the tricycle, where the saddle bag usually is, I noticed,’ said John. ‘It’s sticking out like a turkey’s tail-feathers.’

‘Exactly,’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘Every time the tricycle swoops under the broom, John, do your best to pull out a few twigs. When it comes up the other side, I shall to the same. Cheer up, Rosemary, I think it’s going to work.Now, John!’

With a‘whoosh’ Mrs Witherspoon dived beneath them once more, and as she went, John bent over and snatched a couple of twigs. As it came up the other side, Miss Dibdin pulled out a few more. The broom had now lost all sense of direction, heading first in one direction, then in another. Round went the tricycle again. This time John managed to pull out several twigs and Miss Dibdin, in her turn, a considerable handful.

‘That’s loosened them nicely. It’s beginning to work!’ said Miss Dibdin with a chuckle. Mrs Witherspoon stopped chanting. The tricycle had begun to slow down. Loosened from the band that held them by the removal of the first twigs, the others began to slip away of their own accord, and as they fell out of sight into the mist below, the tricycle went slower and slower, although Mrs Witherspoon pedalled faster and faster.

‘Whatever is the matter with you?’ she said to the tricycle, as it began to flounder, like a bather in deep water who can’t swim. The more it faltered, the more the broom began to pick up speed and purpose.

‘Matter?’ called Miss Dibdin triumphantly. ‘Look behind you, Dulcie dear! Look at your twigs! It was as easy as plucking a chicken!’ Mrs Witherspoon looked.

‘No! No! Not that!’ she screamed. ‘My power is ebbing away!’ And as the last twig fell, and disappeared into the greyness below, she threw up her hands, and the tricycle plummeted down and down out of sight into the thick blanket of mist.

‘Who is the winner now?’ Miss Dibdin shouted after her, with a triumphant laugh. From far away, as though in defiance, came the faint ringing of the bicycle bell … and then … silence.

‘Rosie! Are you all right?’ asked John anxiously. Rosemary nodded.

‘The minute Mrs Witherspoon stopped that chanting, my arms and legs seemed to become unbound again. But poor thing, do you think she’s hurt?’

‘Witches, like cats, have nine lives. That’s why they work together. She will survive, no doubt,’ said Miss Dibdin coldly.

‘Oughtn’t we to go down and see?’ asked John.

‘You can’t,’ she replied. ‘You commanded the broom to go to Fallowhithe, and to Fallowhithe it will go. Nothing will stop it, except more powerful magic.’

As she spoke, the mist round them began to dissolve. It became thinner and thinner, until at last they sailed out into radiant sunshine.

‘Thank goodness!’ said Rosemary. She looked down. ‘Why we’re right over the motorway to Fallowhithe and flying lower!’

‘I say,’ went on John. ‘Look at the roundabout down there!’

Just below them was a circle of green grass. Round it flowed what looked like an unending stream of traffic. In the middle of the roundabout, they could just see a pink blob, and the crumpled shape of what might once have been a tricycle. As they flew over, it looked as though the pink blob shook its fist at them.

‘But however will she get away from there, with traffic swirling round all the time?’ asked John.

‘It will do her no harm to cool her heels for a little,’ said Miss Dibdin drily. ‘Besides, it might keep her out of mischief.’

19. The Dump

‘I say, we’re nearly over Fallowhithe,’ said Rosemary, when once more she looked ahead. ‘We must have gone at a terrific pace through that cloud after all.’

Instead of the patchwork of fields and trees over which they had been flying, there was a scatter of houses, with the green spaces dividing them growing narrower the further they flew, until at last the buildings closed their ranks, and the greyness of the rooftops was only broken here and there by a small back garden.

‘How in the world can the broom find Calidor?’ said John, as he looked down on the sea of buildings below.

‘It will,’ said Miss Dibdin calmly. ‘I think it is searching already.’

They had began to lose height and speed, at the same time making a wide circle. Suddenly, without warning, the broom dropped, so quickly that its three passengers felt as though their insides were not quite keeping pace with their outsides.‘Like going down in a lift,’ as John said later. They just had time to see that there was an open space of some sort beneath them, then they landed, with a deafening clanking and clonking, on a knobbly, uneven surface. They all sat up, a little shakily, and looked anxiously around. They were inthe middle of a hollow, in a great mound of rusty old tin cans.

‘No wonder we made such a racket when we landed!’ said John. ‘Wherever are we?’

At once, a voice John and Rosemary both recognized answered:‘Fallowhithe Rubbish Dump!’

‘Calidor!’ shouted John and Rosemary.

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‘John and Rosemary!’ cried Calidor, with just as much pleasure. ‘What in the world brings you here? And Miss Dibdin too!’

He stepped delicately down from the pile of tins on which he had been sitting, and joined them in their hollow, purring loudly.

‘Oh, well done, broom!’ whispered Rosemary. ‘Well done, and thank you!’ And as she gave it a pat the stick gave a little wriggle, as though in acknowledgement, and then lay still. Miss Dibdin had risen to her feet, with some difficulty, and a clatter of tins.

‘First, I should like to pay my respects to Prince Calidor, and to apologize for any lack of respect I may have shown in the past, before I was aware …’ She held out the skirts of her coat, and was in the middle of a rather wobbly curtsey as she spoke, when the tins gave way beneath her and she sat down abruptly. ‘And if I can be of any assistance to your Highness, I shall be only too honoured!’ she went on breathlessly.

Calidor bowed his head graciously in reply, but he gave John and Rosemary an inquiring glance, which Miss Dibdin noticed. She added drily:‘Oh, it’s all right. I have not the pleasure of hearing cats talk, so you can say what you like to John and Rosemary. Don’t mind me.’

‘Then she knows who I am?’ inquired Calidor. John nodded.

‘But you have given up witchery, haven’t you?’ said Rosemary.

‘Totally and absolutely,’ replied Miss Dibdin firmly. ‘I merely came for the ride. I have given these children my broom.’

‘I got it to fly properly,’ said Rosemary. ‘And we flew here to tell you we’ve found Carbonel!’

‘Found my father?’ exclaimed Calidor. ‘Wonderful news! Where is he?’

‘At Tucket Towers,’ said John. ‘Mrs Witherspoon wants him to be her witch’s cat!’ and of course he won’t.’

‘Myfather a witch’s cat!’ said Calidor in an outraged voice.

‘So she has shut him up in the little room at the top of the tower until he changes his mind …’ said Rosemary.

‘With the Scrabbles to keep guard,’ interrupted John.

‘Scrabbles?’ queried Calidor.

‘Queer creatures with eyes back and front, and iron paws,’ said Rosemary. ‘They sit in a ring round him day and night, in case he should try to escape.’

‘But that’s not all,’ went on John. ‘Mrs Witherspoon is getting fed up with waiting for Carbonel to change his mind, and she has told Grisana and Melissa …’

‘That wicked pair!’ interrupted Calidor with a hiss. His back was bristling and his tail twitched angrily.

‘She has told Grisana that if Carbonel has not consented to be her witch’s cat by moonrise tonight, she can have him, to do with him what she likes!’ said Rosemary. ‘And we heard Grisana tell Melissa that she would take Carbonel captive back to Broomhurst. And thenyou would come to rescue him, and they would be lying in wait, all ready to scrodge the two of you.’

Calidor’s tail was no longer just twitching, it was lashing angrily, while he made curious growling, cat noises in his throat: ‘How dare they! How dare they!’ he hissed.

‘Melissa pretends she doesn’t mind that you won’t marry her, but she is furious really,’ said Rosemary.

‘If only Mattins had held his tongue!’ went on Calidor.

‘He did it because when Mrs Witherspoon found Carbonel, she didn’t want him for her witch’s cat any more,’ said Rosemary.

‘And because you didn’t trust him enough to tell him who you really were,’ said John. ‘But he’s sorry now. Mrs Witherspoon punished him because he told Grisana about Carbonel, without her permission. She plaited his whiskers. And once she said she would plait Carbonel’s, if he wouldn’t do what she wanted.’

‘What!’ said Calidor, rising to his four paws. ‘Plait my father’s whiskers? Never! Now listen to me! Grisana thinks that I shall go to his rescue … and she is right. But not when she expects it! I shan’t wait till he has been taken prisoner to Broomhurst. You say we have till moonrise tonight before Mrs Witherspoon plans to hand Carbonel over to Grisana?’

John nodded.‘Tucket Towers will be surrounded by a troop of crack Broomhurst cats well before moonrise, ready to pounce as soon as Mrs Witherspoon sets him free.’

‘Then most of their attention will be fixed on Tucket Towers,’ went on Calidor. ‘They will expect no opposition. In the meantime, with an army of Fallowhithe faithfuls, I shall advance secretly and attack them from behind. Grisana must be routed once and for all.’

‘Yes, but what about Carbonel?’ asked Rosemary.

‘That is where you come in,’ said Calidor coolly. ‘While we fight to the death outside and distract attention, you will somehow get hold of the key.’

‘Yes, but I say …’ began John. Calidor took no notice. ‘Release my father,’ he went on, ‘and then, of course, you will take your orders from him.’

‘We’ll do anything we can to help,’ said Rosemary hurriedly. (She was afraid from John’s red face that he was going to explode at what he called Calidor’s bossiness.) ‘We shall be there, a bit before moonrise.’ Luckily at this point they were interrupted by Miss Dibdin.

‘I thought you two were in a hurry to get back to Highdown?’ They turned to her with surprise, having almost forgotten she was there. ‘I’ve just heard the Town Hall clock strike two.’

‘Two o’clock? Heavens! The Sale begins at half past. Come on, Rosie,’ said John, getting to his feet with a clatter.

‘One question before you go,’ said Calidor. ‘How is my dear little Dumpsie?’

‘Dumpsie? Her paw is much better …’ began Rosemary, when she was interrupted by a loud cat voice behind her.

‘And who is it as talks so free about my daughter, Wellingtonia?’

They turned to see the tousled head of an old cat, peering down at them over the top of the tin-can mountain. Her pepper-and-salt-coloured fur stuck out in all directions, but her whiskers curved bravely, and her moth-eaten tail rose at a jaunty angle.‘Oh, it’s you, young Calidor!’ she said.

‘It is I,’ said Calidor graciously. ‘And these are John and Rosemary, the young Hearing Humans I told you of, who have taken Dumpsie in, and bound up her wounded paw.’

‘For which I gives a mother’s heartfelt thanks,’ replied the cat. ‘A good kitten, my Dumpsie, though I sez it myself. I heard a clatter of cans just now, enough to waken the Great Puss Himself, and I sez to myself “Strangers!” I sez. “Best see if it’s friend or enemy.” Only those as learns to walk soft-footed lasts long in the Dump, my dears. Now, would you be going back to Wellingtonia?’

‘As soon as we jolly well can!’ said John.

‘Then would you take a little something as a present for her? There was me just saying to myself as I was taking home my supper, how Dumpsie would have licked her chops at the smell of it!’

As she spoke, she stooped, and picked up something from between her front paws. Then, stepping carefully from tin to tin, testing her weight on each one before trusting herself to it, she joined them in the hollow with hardly a sound.

‘Of course we’ll take it …’ began Rosemary, then she hesitated. ‘It’s a bit smelly, isn’t it?’ she went on, as she picked up the unsavoury morsel between a reluctant finger and thumb.

‘Ripe, dear, just how she likes her haddocks’ heads,’ said the old cat.

‘Oh, come on, Rosie!’ said John. ‘We must go! Put the pongy thing in a tin or something, there are plenty to choose from, and get on the broom. This time I’m going in front. I’ve made up my rhyme. I know I’m not much good at poetry,’ he added, going rather pink. ‘I hope it will do.’

‘Remember, we meet tonight at moonrise!’ said Calidor, as John and Rosemary and Miss Dibdin mounted the broom. ‘Give my love to my one and only Dumpsie!’

‘And tell her to mind her manners!’ added the old cat. ‘A bit quick on her answers she is.’

‘All aboard?’ cried John. ‘Then let’s go!’ He paused a moment, then he said in a loud voice:

‘To Uncle Zack

Please take us back!’

‘Brief but businesslike,’ remarked Miss Dibdin.

There was a slight pause, while Rosemary wondered if the broom would obey such a bald command, but the handle began to vibrate again, and it rose steeply into the air.

‘Farewell, and a thousand thanks go with you!’ called Calidor after them, as the broom straightened out and made for Highdown.

20. The Motto

THE return flight to Highdown passed off without further adventure. As they flew over the roundabout, they all three peered down in search of Mrs Witherspoon.

‘I can’t see anything pink there now,’ shouted Rosemary.

‘Nor can I, but I think I saw the remains of the tricycle,’ called John. ‘Wherever can she be? — I say,’ he said, as they sped on, ‘more clouds ahead and it’s beginning to rain. We shall get simply soaked!’

‘Not if you tell the broom to fly above the rain clouds,’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘It won’t like its twigs getting wet.’

‘Up! Up!’ cried John, clapping the broomstick with his knees, and it responded gallantly. Soon they were flying in brilliant sunshine, the tumbling clouds, so dark and grey on their underside, glistened white and bright as sugar icing from above. The country below was completely hidden, and it was not till some time later, when the broom began to lose height, that they guessed they were nearing home. Soon they were surrounded by the damp grey mist of the rain cloud once more.

‘I wish you’d told the broom to land us at the bottom of the garden,’ said Rosemary. ‘You simply said “Take us to Uncle Zack”, and he may be anywhere; having a bath, or crossing the road …’

‘Not now, you owl,’ said John. ‘The Sale will have started, I should think, so he’s sure to be in one of the showrooms.’

‘Which may be even more awkward,’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘It may be full of customers.’

‘They’ll have a fit if they see us come swooping in on the broom,’ said Rosemary.

‘So undignified for an elderly school teacher!’ complained Miss Dibdin.

‘Well, it can’t be helped now,’ said John. ‘I did wonder about the garden, but I couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with it except “pardon”, and I was blowed if I was going to apologize to any old besom!’ The broom bucked uncomfortably at this. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,’ he went on hurriedly.

They had dropped below the clouds now, and were being well and truly rained upon. The roof of Roundels was racing up to meet them.

‘Hold tight! And keep your heads down!’ yelled John, as the broom dived suddenly. It swooped through the open front door, turned sharply to the left, overturning the umbrella-stand as the twigs swished round, and landed with a clatter, exactly as it had been commanded, at the feet of Uncle Zack. It so happened that he was standing by Mr Sprules, with his back to the room, studying some papers on a table which had been pushed against the wall. Neither of them saw the broom’s arrival; they only heard it, and turned quickly to see Miss Dibdin struggling to her feet.

‘My dear madam!’ said Uncle Zack, hurrying to give her a helping hand. ‘I trust you are not hurt?’

‘No, no,’ she replied rather breathlessly. ‘Only a little shaken.’

‘And as for you two children! What are you doing sitting on the floor? And where on earth have you been all this time? We finished lunch ages ago.’

‘Now, I beg you, don’t be cross with them,’ said Miss Dibdin. ‘We are old friends from Fallowhithe, we met just … just outside the village, and they both insisted that I should come with them to … to …’

‘To the Sale?’ said Uncle Zack.

‘To the Sale, of course,’ said Miss Dibdin, hurriedly, as she dusted down her skirt. ‘Antiques … so interesting! I only hope this dreadful weather will not keep your customers away.’ The rain was beating steadily on the window.

‘I’m afraid it is only too likely,’ said Uncle Zack ruefully. ‘There are only a few people here so far. But let me show you round, madam, while these two graceless children go down to the kitchen and get something to eat!’

‘And face the music,’ said Mr Sprules. ‘I don’t think Mrs Bodkin is very pleased with you! Good luck!’

He was right. With the help of her married cousin, she was setting out cups and saucers on a number of trays on the kitchen table. When she saw John and Rosemary, she paused in her work for a moment, and rolled her eyes. Shesaid nothing, but they recognized the cloud of crossness that Uncle Zack had described, in which she seemed to wrap herself. It was her married cousin who did the scolding. As they could not explain why they were so late, all they could do was to say they were very sorry, and put up with the reproaches. It was Mrs Bodkin who came to their rescue in the end.

‘Oh, give over, Daisy, do,’ she said. ‘At least they’re back now and no harm done. There’s some cold meat and salad on a couple of plates in the larder. You’d better go and eat it, somewhere out of the way.’

‘And then we’ll come and help with the teas won’t we, John?’ said Rosemary.

‘Raining cats and dogs, it is. Just your poor uncle’s luck!’ went on Mrs Bodkin. Oh, I nearly forgot. A parcel came for you when you were out, Rosie. I put it on your bed.’

‘I expect it’s my other coat,’ said Rosemary. ‘I asked Mum to send it.’

The most‘out-of-the-way’ place they could think of was Rosemary’s bedroom, at the top of the house. Dumpsie was already curled up, fast asleep, on the patchwork quilt, with the parcel beside her.

‘It seems a shame to disturb her,’ said Rosemary. ‘I’ll put the smelly old fish where she can see it when she wakes.’ She had been clasping the rusty tin wrapped in her handkerchief ever since they left Fallowhithe.

As she expected, the parcel proved to be her old coat.

‘Isn’t it funny how friendly old clothes feel?’ she said as she slipped it on.

‘Just look at Dumpsie,’ said John.

The smell of the fish was so strong, that even in her sleep her whiskers began to quiver, and her small black nose to twitch. Suddenly she was wide awake.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said, lifting her muzzle into the air, and moving it from side to side, with eyes half-closed, while she savoured to the full the richness of the smell. ‘Whatever is this delicious …?’

‘It’s a present from your mother,’ said John. ‘We’ve just been to Fallowhithe Rubbish Dump, and … for goodness’ sake eat it pretty quickly!’ he added, holding his hand over his nose.

‘But not on my bed!’ said Rosemary, and she hurriedly tipped the fish head on to a piece of paper in the hearth. ‘We’ll tell you all about everything while we eat our dinner,’ said John. ‘I’m rattling inside I’m so empty.’

They climbed on to the patchwork quilt, and in between mouthfuls of cold meat and salad, they told Dumpsie all their adventures. The little cat actually paused in astonishment several times while polishing off her banquet.

‘And to think as you’ve been to the dear old Dump and talked to my ma!’ she said, when at last she had finished the haddock head and was washing her paws. ‘And did he really say “Give my undying love to my one and only Dumpsie”? Prince Calidor, I mean,’ she went on, purring rapturously. Rosemary nodded. ‘And tonight at moonrise, when you go to Tucket Towers, you’ll let me come too?’ she pleaded. ‘There’s no knowing but even the likes of me might come in useful. My paw hardly hurts at all now.’

John and Rosemary looked at one another and nodded.

‘You’ll have to fly with us on the broom,’ said John. ‘I say, we left it downstairs! I’d better go and fetch it.’

When he returned, Rosemary had tidied herself up and brushed her hair. She was standing in front of the long mirror, waving her arms about in a strange way.

‘What on earth are you doing?’ said John.

‘Trying to see if I could do funny floppy sort of movements; like Mrs Witherspoon, when she was making the Middle Magic.’

‘Like a Meccano model when it hasn’t been screwed up properly,’ said John. ‘You’ll never do it. You’re not scrawny enough.’

Rosemary turned suddenly from the mirror, and stood, hands plunged in the pockets of her coat, staring out of the small latticed window at the rain-soaked view.

‘It must be exciting to be able to makereal magic,’ she said in a faraway voice. ‘Not just flying on broomsticks. What did Mrs Witherspoon mean when she said I was twice the witch that Miss Dibdin was?’

‘Search me!’ said John. ‘Have you noticed how different Miss Dibdin is since she packed in the witch business? She’s nice now, and quite sensible.’

Rosemary did not answer. Instead, she turned suddenly from the window and said:‘If I was a witch I’d wish you good at football. Would you like that?’ John shook his head.

‘It wouldn’t be any use. I should know it was only the magic, not me being good at it.’ Then he laughed. ‘A corny old witch you’d make, Rosie! Why, what’s the matter?’

Rosemary had taken off her coat and was feeling the hem.‘I’ve just found a hole in one of the pockets, and I think something has slipped through into the lining.’

After a few minutes’ poking, she produced a small screw of paper.

‘Bet it’s only an old shopping list,’ said John, as she smoothed it out; but it wasn’t a shopping list.

‘It’s a sort of poem,’ said Rosemary, and began to read:

‘Choose your wishes carefully:

Seven steps to gramarye.’

She broke off.‘I think grammar’s boring. Whoever …’

‘Wait a minute,’ interrupted John. ‘Isn’t “gramarye” an old word for magic? Nothing to do with grammar — verbs and nouns and things. Read it again. All of it.’

‘Choose your wishes carefully:

Seven steps to gramarye.

Build them one upon another,

Each wish built upon another.

Seven stages then you’ll be

On the road to witchery.

Learn your lesson:

Learn it fast:

The seventh wish will be your last.’

Rosemary’s voice faded into silence, and they stood and looked at one another. ‘What double-dyed idiots we’ve been,’ said John at last. ‘It’s the instructions that came in the purple cracker, about how to use the Golden Gew-Gaw.’

‘And we thought it was just a stupid cracker motto. I must have shoved it in my pocket, and it went through the hole, and it’s been there all the time!’ said Rosemary.

‘Only seven wishes,’ went on John. ‘How many have we had already?’ He began to count them on his fingers. ‘There was the first one at the bus stop when you wished you could fly …’

‘Only the ring fell off, but I suppose that counts,’ said Rosemary. ‘And then I wished the Scrabbles would come alive. That’s two.’

‘And that lighter-than-air business. That makes three.’

‘And Mother Boddles and the washing, makes four.’

‘And Mrs Witherspoon wishing Miss Dibdin away to the Ladies’ Waiting Room makes five,’ said John. ‘So there are only two more wishes left! And Mrs Witherspoon has got the ring. She may even have used up the other two by now!’

‘And all our wishes have been so silly,’ said Rosemary. ‘We haven’t done any of this “build-them-one-upon-another” business. What a waste!’

‘Let’s hope Mrs Witherspoon still doesn’t know the Gew-Gaw is a wishing ring,’ said John. ‘She couldn’t have been more surprised when she magicked Miss Dibdin away with it. We’vegot to get it back somehow, before she wishes something frightful.’

‘But we don’t even know where she is now!’ said Rosemary. ‘What a mess! What can we do?’

‘Go and help Mother Boddles for a start,’ said John. ‘Come on …’

‘There’s still only a handful of people come to the Sale,’ he said a few minutes later. They were standing by the Cromwellian table, which had been moved to one of the showrooms, on which the cups and saucers had been arranged.

‘Poor Uncle Zack!’ said Rosemary. ‘He’s looking so worried. I wish there was something we could do to help.’

‘Well, there’s one thing you can do, and that’s take a cup of tea and some biscuits to the young lady over there,’ said Mrs Bodkin drily. ‘The one in pink.’ John and Rosemary turned to look in the direction of her nod. Standing talking to an elderly man with a drooping moustache was young Mrs Witherspoon. She was wearing a flowery hat and white lacy gloves.

‘Well don’t just stand there with your mouths open,’ said Mrs Bodkin. ‘Go on! And mind you get the right change.’

Rosemary took the cup of tea and John the plate of biscuits. Very slowly they walked towards Mrs Witherspoon.

21. The Sale

‘I’M scared!’ whispered Rosemary anxiously out of the side of her mouth as they crossed the room.

‘Me too,’ John whispered back. ‘But I shouldn’t think she’d want to make a scene here; not in public.’

‘You never know with witches.’

The‘lady in pink’ didn’t notice the two children at first. She seemed to be listening with great interest to her companion, who appeared to be telling her about a burglary.

‘The grand piano I bought from old Mrs Witherspoon some years ago. You say you are her niece? What a curious coincidence!’ (John and Rosemary exchanged glances at this. Pretending she’s her own niece! they thought.) ‘A very fine instrument, that piano,’ went on the man. ‘Perhaps you knew it?’

‘Very well indeed!’ said young Mrs Witherspoon.

‘Stolen in broad daylight, this very morning!’

‘Good gracious!’ Mrs Witherspoon said, pretending great surprise.

‘I don’t know what things are coming to. I understand there have been a number of similar burglaries today,’ he went on. ‘The police can’t discover how the thieves got in; and, what is really surprising, how they got the grand piano out without anyone noticing. My wife was writing lettersin the next room and did not hear a sound. I have to admit it was very cleverly done.’

‘You might almost say brilliantly clever,’ said Mrs Witherspoon, with so much energy that the man looked a little surprised.

‘Well, I must go and look round all these beautiful things!’ He waved his hand at the furniture ranged for sale in the showroom. ‘And I mustn’t keep you from your tea. Please give my regards to your aunt. Skeffington is my name. Major Skeffington.’ He bowed politely, and wandered off to examine an old Welsh dresser at the end of the room. Mrs Witherspoon shook with silent laughter, but she stopped laughing abruptly when she turned and saw John and Rosemary standing behind her. Her dark eyes widened.

‘You!’ she said. ‘You twoagain! What are you doing here, you tiresome little busybodies?’

‘We live here,’ said John shortly. ‘However did you get away from the roundabout?’

‘Small thanks to you, and that foolish Dibdin!’ she replied, and her eyes flashed with anger. ‘My tricycle was a complete wreck. I thumbed a lift from a lorry. I had no difficulty, I assure you.’ She put up her hand and patted her hair. ‘But poor Gullion had to walk. I will thank you to keep your inquisitive noses out of my affairs in future.’

‘But it wasyour nose inour affairs when you tried to stop us flying to Fallowhithe on the broom,’ said Rosemary indignantly. Mrs Witherspoon looked at her thoughtfully for a moment.

‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘was it really you or was it Dorothy Dibdin who worked the Flying Magic then?’

‘Well, I helped her to get it right,’ said Rosemary, and added, ‘because of not wearing spectacles.’

‘I thought as much,’ said Mrs Witherspoon, looking at her curiously. ‘You have the makings of …’

‘Yes, but look here —’ broke in John.

‘Do not interrupt, you silly little boy!’ said Mrs Witherspoon sharply.

‘I’m not silly, and I’m not little!’ said John angrily, and his anger gave him courage. ‘And we want our ring back,now. So there!’

‘What ring? I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘The one you stole from the kitchen window-sill. You were the only person who went to the back door that afternoon. Mrs Bodkin said so.’

‘Oh, that wasn’t me. It was …’ She paused, and went on roguishly. ‘It was my aunt!’

‘It wasn’t your aunt,’ went on John, now thoroughly roused. ‘I don’t believe you’ve got an aunt! It was you, before you magicked yourself young! We saw it happen, because we watched you make the Middle Magic. And after that you wished Miss Dibdin away, and then we saw the ring on your finger!’

‘And you couldn’t have sent Miss Dibdin off like that without the wishing ring!’ added Rosemary. As soon as she had spoken she clapped her hand over her mouth, but it was too late.

‘That’s torn it!’ said John reproachfully.

‘It’s awishing ring? Thank you for telling me, child,’ said Mrs Witherspoon. ‘Then I shall certainly not give it back to you. I thought there was a strange fire smouldering in that crimson stone.’

‘Then you admit you’ve got it?’ demanded John. ‘If you don’t give it back, we shall tell you stole it, and about the grand piano, and all the other things you sold and magicked back again!’

‘And about you being your own aunt!’ added Rosemary, though she was not sure if she made herself clear.

‘And who do you think would believe a single word of it?’ said Mrs Witherspoon coolly. ‘So let’s say no more about it.’

Both John and Rosemary had to admit to themselves that nobody would believe their story.

‘And now I should like that cup of tea,’ said Mrs Witherspoon.

‘Tea and biscuits costs ten pence,’ growled John.

‘Then you may hold my gloves, boy, while I get the money from my purse,’ said Mrs Witherspoon. As she pulled them off, something red and sparkling flashed for a fleeting second through the white lace. John took the gloves from her while she felt inside her handbag. He held them at arm’s length at first, just in case they had some unexpected magic power. One of them felt slightly heavier than the other. Just as Mrs Witherspoon took out her purse, Major Skeffington came back again.

‘There’s a charming old tea-set on the Welsh dresser,’ he said, ‘I don’t know if such things interest you?’

Under cover of the conversation that followed, Rosemary whispered:

‘What’s the matter? Why are you looking pop-eyed?’

‘There’s something hard in the finger of one of the gloves. Here, hold these biscuits while I see what it is.’

Rosemary took the plate from him. John held the heavier glove by the tips of the fingers, and shook it into the palm of the other hand. Out fell the Golden Gew-Gaw! For a second they stood and stared at it.

‘What gorgeous good luck!’ breathed John. Only just in time he closed his fist round the ring.

Major Skeffington had drifted away, and Mrs Witherspoon turned and held out the money for the tea. As she did so, she saw the bare finger which the ring should have circled. One look at John’s triumphantly grinning face told her what had happened.

‘You sly deceitful boy! Or is this some magic of yours?’ she said, turning to Rosemary.

‘Good gracious, no. I can’t do magic,’ said Rosemary. ‘I expect it’s because, now your finger isn’t old and knobbly any more, the ring slipped off into your glove.’

‘Give me back the ring!’ Mrs Witherspoon hissed, turning furiously on John.

‘No!’ said John. ‘I won’t. It isn’t yours!’

Then Mrs Witherspoon pounced, but he was too quick for her. He turned and fled, and with a clatter of high heels she ran after him. When Rosemary had found somewhere to put the biscuits and the tea, now largely slopped in the saucer, she followed as fast as she could, with Dumpsie, a small dark shadow at her heels. The few customers strolling about looked up with surprise as John dodged round them. Once he nearly collided with Uncle Zack, who was so wrapped up in his worried thoughts that he hardly noticed.

Down the stairs raced John, and out into the garden, with Mrs Witherspoon close behind. Indoors they had been fairly evenly matched, but outside she was handicapped by her high heels on the soft rain-sodden ground. On they ran, dodging and doubling behind shrubs and bushes, and as he panted on John said to himself:‘I’ve got the Golden Gew-Gaw … now I can wish something … really useful! I can’t bear … Uncle Zack looking so miserable. If only … I was better at rhymes,’ he went on. ‘Uncle, carbuncle … that won’t do! Wish, fish, bish … no good either. I hope it won’t … be me that makes a bish!’

Now, anyone who has tried to make up a rhyming Wishing Magic in the rain, while dodging an angry young witch round dripping rhododendron bushes, will realize what a difficult job John had set himself; but he was determined to do it. He thought and thought as he darted from bush to bush. Rosemary and Dumpsie, who were doing their best to catch up, suddenly saw him disappear behind a particularly shadowy shrub.

Mrs Witherspoon stood crouched, knees bent, fingers spread, ready for him to reappear, which he did, unexpectedly, several bushes away. As she turned to face him she lost one of her high-heeled shoes in Uncle Zack’s favourite rose-bed. While she stooped to rescue it, John threw up his arms with the crimson stone of the ring glowing on his finger, and sang out in a loud, clear voice:

‘I wish at once that everyone

For miles and miles and miles,

Shall come on foot or bus or car…’

Here he paused, frowning hard.

‘By road and over stiles,’ he went on.

‘And buy and buy from Uncle’s shop …’

At this point he dried up completely, standing white-faced, with screwed-up eyes.

‘Till all is sold, then they can stop!’ yelled Rosemary, from the shadow of the toolshed.

‘Till all is sold, then they can stop!’ repeated John gratefully.

Then he turned, and clutching the ring in his fist once more dashed for the house. Mrs Witherspoon, who had kicked off her other shoe, was gaining on him now. John’s breath was coming in gasps.

‘Rosie! Rosie! … Stop her if you can …’ he panted. ‘For the sake of the Golden Gew-Gaw!’ But Rosemary was too far behind to do anything. It was Dumpsie who came to the rescue. Just as Mrs Witherspoon stretched out her hand to grip John by the shoulder, the little cat dashed between her feet so that she stumbled and fell on her knees on the wet grass.

‘Oh well done, Dumpsie!’ said Rosemary. All three dashed into the house, and slammed and bolted the door behind them.

At the top of the stairs they met Uncle Zack. Now he was smiling from ear to ear.

‘Go and help Mrs Bodkin, you two! Customers suddenly started pouring in only a few minutes ago. The drive is black with people! Extraordinary!’

‘You go and help, Rosie,’ said John, ‘and I’ll join you in a minute. I’m going to hide this blessed ring in my bedroom, then even if Mrs Witherspoon comes and searches me she won’t find it.’ He raced upstairs, and pushed the Golden Gew-Gaw under his pillow.

The rest of the afternoon was spent in such a flurry of handing round cups of tea, such a running backwards and forwards with cups to be washed and refilled, that there was no time to think of anything else. Realizing that they were rushed off their feet, Miss Dibdin offered to help. With sleeves rolled up, she stood at the sink in a cloud of steam, washing up a stream of teacups, while Mrs Bodkin’s married cousin dried, and Mrs Bodkin poured out.

Presently the drive was filled with customers going the other way, carrying copper kettles, candlesticks, footstools and china; staggering under the weight of chairs and tables; helping one another to take away beds and cupboards and chests of drawers. In ten minutes, the collection of china ornaments with the label‘All In This Tray Six Pence’ had been cleared by the children, of whom there were dozens. No one went away empty-handed. Uncle Zack made out bills in a happy trance, and Mr Sprules took the money and gave change.

‘I never saw anything like it,’ said Mrs Bodkin when the rush was over. ‘The whole village was here, as well as crowds I’ve never set eyes on, and all buying as if they’d gone mad!’

‘Incredible!’ said Uncle Zack.

‘Remarkable!’ said Mr Sprules.

‘There was Mrs Bucket from the bakery, says she’s bought a four-post bed, and her with a house as big as a matchbox! And old Mr Grimes, who’s not left his bed for nine months, here in his pyjamas! Said he didn’t know why but he suddenly felt he’dgot to come. Bought a grandfather clock andcarried it off over his shoulder. Said he hadn’t enjoyed himself so much for years!’

‘And the road-man,’ said Rosemary. ‘When I took him his biscuits, he showed me a funny sort of cup he’d bought, with a ledge to rest his moustache on when he drinks his tea, so that he shan’t get it wet … his moustache, I mean. He’s as pleased as Punch with it!’

‘He told me some chaps are coming tomorrow to replace the cat’s eyes by the railway bridge,’ said John.

‘There isn’t a thing left in the shop,’ said Uncle Zack. ‘I’m sorry they had to go, all my treasures, but it had to be. I think we can say it’s been a thoroughly successful day! Thanks to all my gallant helpers!’ He turned to Miss Dibdin. ‘It was so kind of you to give a hand with the washing-up.’

‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘It has done me a very good turn. I have arranged to go into lodgings with Mrs Bodkin’s married cousin while I am house-hunting, which is really what I came to Highdown to do. I shall move in tomorrow morning.’

‘You know,’ said John later that evening, ‘I’m beginning to feel uncomfortable about Miss Dibdin not being told that her parcel really did come. We’ve been behaving as though it was our property, and it’s really hers. Do you think we ought to tell her about the purple cracker and all the rest of it, now she’s so much more sensible?’

They had gone to look at the empty showrooms, and their footsteps echoed eerily on the bare boards.

‘As a matter of fact, I did begin to tell her,’ said Rosemary, going rather red. ‘It just sort of … slipped out, while she was washing up this afternoon.’ She went on quickly, interrupting John’s exclamation of dismay. ‘Oh it’s all right! She wouldn’t listen. Said that now she hadgiven the whole thing up she didn’t want to hear about the parcel. I’m sorry. I know I’m always saying things when I ought to shut up, but they sort of slip out. I can’t help it somehow. We’re so different, you and me. I think you were super brave when you tackled Mrs Witherspoon about thering. I couldn’t have done that. I was scared stiff.’

‘Well, it wasn’t as brave as you were when you made me pour that purple stuff down your ear, and we weren’t sure what it would do to you,’ said John.

‘The Hearing Mixture?’ said Rosemary. John nodded, and shuffled his feet in an embarrassed way. ‘I was too scared to do it, but I let you. I’ve felt uncomfortable about it ever since,’ he mumbled.

‘And Dumpsie was as brave as a lion when she tripped up Mrs Witherspoon, so that we could escape,’ went on Rosemary.

‘It runs in the family,’ said Dumpsie airily. ‘Lions is second cousins to cats. Oh well, I suppose there’s different ways of being brave.’

‘Well, I bet we shall need them all tonight when we go to Tucket Towers,’ said John.

22. Councils of War

‘THERE hasn’t been a single second, since we left the Dump, to plan what we’re going to do tonight when we get to Tucket Towers,’ said John. ‘It’s half past nine already, and moonrise is at half past ten, I looked it up in my School Boy’s Diary.’

They were sitting on Rosemary’s bed, with Dumpsie washing her already spotless shirt front as she sat between them on the patchwork quilt. Supper had been late, after the clearing up and excitements of the day. Pleading tiredness, they had gone upstairs soon after.

‘I met Mrs Witherspoon again this evening,’ said Rosemary uneasily. John looked at her in surprise. ‘I wanted to tell you, but there hasn’t been a chance. It was in the drive when the Sale was over, and you were helping Mrs Bodkin collect the dirty tea things. I’d been helping a woman load up her pram with a dinner service. There wasn’t much room for the baby as well. It was queer. She seemed much more worried about the dinner service.’

‘I expect that was the magic,’ said John. ‘It seems to make people quite different somehow. I don’t think it really cares what happens to them. Like making a fool of me up against the station roof, and Mrs Bodkin having to do all that ironing. And imagine bringing poor old Mr Grimes to the Sale in his pyjamas! But what did Mrs Witherspoon say?’

‘She must have been hanging about in the bushes by the gate because she pounced on me as I was coming back,’ said Rosemary. ‘She said she couldn’t come inside without her shoes — she’d lost them in the flower-bed — and her pink frock was all muddy. She asked me to give you a message. She said: “Tell that boy I shall be even with him yet, in the way he will mind most and least expect!” And then she laughed, but it was a queer sort of laugh. I didn’t like it. And then she said …’ Rosemary stopped, and shuffled uncomfortably on the patchwork quilt.

‘Well, go on! What did she say?’

‘She said,’ went on Rosemary slowly, ‘ “Have you ever thought of being a witch yourself? If you come to Tucket Towers, Gullion and I will teach you. You’d make a very pretty witchling”!’

‘She never said that!’ said John incredulously, and burst out laughing. Rosemary did not laugh. She sat with her chin in her hands, staring at the toes of her shoes. ‘A crumby old witch you’d make, Rosie! But what infernal cheek! What did she say when you turned her down?’

‘She just laughed that queer laugh again, and then she said: “Stranger things have happened”, and not to forget her message to you.’

‘ “Get even with me in the way I least expect”?’ repeated John more soberly.

In the thoughtful silence that followed, faint and far away they heard the church clock strike.

‘Gosh! Ten o’clock!’ said John. ‘And here we are talking nonsense, instead of making plans to rescue Carbonel. I’d better take my torch.’

‘There’s one more wish left in the Golden Gew-Gaw,’ said Rosemary. ‘Why don’t we use magic to clear the whole business up?’

John shook his head.‘It’s too complicated. What should we actually wish for? We should only make a mess of it. Besides, I’m quite certain Carbonel and Calidor would want to win this battle by themselves, not because of any old wishing ring. Like me and football.’

‘I suppose so,’ said Rosemary doubtfully. At the mention of Calidor, Dumpsie had stopped washing herself. She sat up very straight, and pricked her ears.

‘Well how on earth do we get inside Tucket Towers for a start?’ went on Rosemary.

‘That bit’s easy,’ said John. ‘The latch of the scullery window is broken, you remember. We’re lucky that there isn’t any electric light any more. I suppose Mrs Witherspoon has to use candles instead.’

‘In all those grand silver candlesticks,’ added Rosemary.

‘It’ll make it easier to get to the tower without being spotted, said John.

‘But twice as creepy!’ added Rosemary. ‘And with Mrs Witherspoon keeping the key of Carbonel’s prison on a string round her neck, how on earth do we unlock the door? Calidor didn’t know what he was asking.’

‘If Calidor tells us to do something, we does it,’ said Dumpsie shortly. ‘What a pother you’m making over this business! If you want the turret door opened, why don’t you let this Witch-Woman do it for you? Is there anywhere you can hide by the door?’

‘I suppose we could squat behind some of that junk on the landing, outside,’ said John. ‘But how would that help us?’

‘See here,’ said Dumpsie in a patient voice. ‘The Witch-Woman comes up them twirly stairs you told me about, holding her candle. She’ll have to put it down somewheres while she hauls up the key, hand over hand. Then she puts the key in the lock, and as soon as you hear it turning you ups and blows out the light so as she can’t see what’s going on.’

‘But what about all those Scrabbles on guard in a ring round Carbonel? They will be able to see, each one with its four great eyes shining back and front,’ said Rosemary.

‘Wait a minute,’ interrupted John. ‘Mrs Witherspoon thinks the Scrabbles can see in the dark because they’re called cat’s eyes, but I don’t believe they can. When they are just cat’s eyes in the road, they only glow when the headlights of a car shine full on them. They justreflect light. Don’t you remember, Rosie, we saw it happen?’

‘Of course! Then if the candle is blown out and there is no light, their eyes aren’t any good and they won’t be able to see!’

‘Cat’s eyes!’ said Dumpsie scornfully. ‘Cats is cats, and Scrabbles is Scrabbles.’

‘But even if the Scrabbles can’t see in the dark, neither can we,’ said Rosemary obstinately.

‘Nor the Witch-Woman neither,’ said Dumpsie. ‘So humans start even. Only King Carbonel and me, true cats, will see near as plain as day without much light. It’ll all be easy as falling off a dustbin lid!’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said John soberly. ‘But at least we’ve got some sort of plan to start off with. We must be going. Come on, Rosie! You’re better at these magic rhymes than I am. Think one up quickly while I fish the broom out from under your bed. You’d better tell it to takeus to the little wood. We’re less likely to be spotted landing there, and the rooks will be asleep.’

In no time at all they were sailing through Rosemary’s bedroom window, with John in the middle and Dumpsie up behind. The night was dark. Here and there, different coloured squares of light glowed where the inhabitants of Highdown sat behind their window curtains. Over the church they flew, so low that John gave the weather-cock on the steeple a flick with his toe and sent it twirling; over the fields, and the dark ribbon that was the railway cutting, with the station a dim shadow crouching away to their left, until they dived down into the gently-swaying black mass which was the wood, landing so neatly that not a twig or a leaf was disturbed.

‘Well done, broom!’ whispered Rosemary, ‘and thank you.’ She propped it up against a tree.

‘Come on,’ said John. ‘We’d better hurry. The sky is getting lighter. It must be nearly moonrise. Here, Dumpsie,’ he went on. ‘I don’t suppose the Broomhurst sentries will bother about humans, but they will be on the lookout for strange cats. You’d better sit inside my jacket untilwe get inside the house.’ (He was still wearing the best suit he had worn for the Sale.) He picked her up and tucked her inside, where she continued to purr her thanks. When they reached the gate into the yard, Rosemary, who was in front, stopped suddenly, and lifted a warning hand.

‘Cats, talking!’ she whispered.

‘You’d better repeat instructions, Growser,’ said a solemn cat-voice. ‘I wouldn’t be in your paws if you make a mistake.’

‘Ofcourse I know the instructions, Splodger,’ said a second voice.

‘Mr Sprules’s cat!’ mouthed Rosemary.

‘One shrill miaow if I see so much as a whisker of a Fallowhithe animal,’ went on Growser. ‘But what’s it all about, I should like to know?’

‘You will be told, all in good time,’ said Splodger. ‘Her Majesty Queen Grisana will be here any minute now to explain. Wait a minute: there she is, I do believe, on the other side of the yard! Come on, let’s hurry!’

The two animals ran off together, and as John and Rosemary peered round the gatepost in the thinning darkness, one after another, shadowy cat shapes ran on silent paws in the same direction.

‘There must be dozens of them!’ whispered John, and then from the far side of the yard came the voice of Grisana. It rose harsh and shrill, like the squeal of a slate pencil that sets your teeth on edge. To an ordinary person it would have sounded like any cat singing to the rising moon, but toJohn and Rosemary, and of course to the animals in the yard, she was making the same sort of speech as Queen Elizabeth I before the battle of the Armada.

‘Cats of Broomhurst!’ she called. ‘Now is the chance to pour shame and scorn on your hated rivals, the cats of Fallowhithe!’ She paused, and there was a stir and a murmur among the animals assembled in the yard. ‘Carbonel, their king, is held prisoner in this very house behind me. When the moon rises he will be set free — or so he thinks. I have commanded you to make a ring round the house, so that, from whichever door or window he leaps, you will be ready to catch and hold him fast!’ There was a yowl of excitement from the cats. ‘We shall take him captive back to Broomhurst!’

‘Yowl! Yowl!’ yelled the cats.

‘But that is not all,’ cried Grisana. ‘When Calidor, his son, hears what has happened, he will come at once to the rescue of his father. Hiding behind every corner and every chimney pot of the town, we shall watch him walk into our trap; and when I give the sign it will be the work of a moment to scrodge the pair of them!’

The vicious way in which Grisana spat out the word‘scrodge’ made Dumpsie poke an indignant head from John’s jacket.

‘Don’t you dare …’ she began.

John pushed her hurriedly back again. Luckily the Broomhurst cats were making such a chorus of triumphant miaows and miaowks that they had not heard her.

‘Come on,’ whispered John. ‘Now’s our chance to creep round to the scullery window while they’re making this shindy, before the sentries go back to their posts.’

23. The Full Moon

SILENTLY, John and Rosemary crept round the front of the house, Dumpsie still making indignant cat noises inside John’s jacket.

‘Look, there’s a light in one of the windows, and someone is playing the piano,’ said Rosemary.

They tiptoed up to the front of the house, and, standing on the weedy flower-bed underneath, peered cautiously through the window. Mrs Witherspoon, swooping and swaying, was playing a strange wild tune, the two flickering candles in their holders on either side making her shadow dance even more wildly. The only thing in the darkened room that was perfectly still was Gullion the toad, who sat motionless on top of the piano.

‘What with the piano pounding in front, and cats caterwauling at the back, nobody would hear us however much noise we made!’ said John. ‘Come on, let’s hurry.’

And hurry they did: across the drive, and through the jungle of what was once the kitchen garden.

‘Of course,’ said Rosemary, ‘the Middle Magic only made thehouse as it was fifty years ago, not the outside. But John, won’t the latch of the scullery window be mended? That’s part of the house.’

John looked at her in alarm.‘I hadn’t thought of that. Come on!’ They broke into a run.

‘Thank goodness!’ he said, when they reached the window. Rosemary had been right. It was no longer broken, but it was neatly pegged open a few inches. The door was locked, as they expected, so John lifted the metal arm from its peg and swung the casement wide. Dumpsie poked her head out of his jacket once more.

‘Better let me get in first, then I can see if it’s all right.’

John lifted her up, and she jumped on to the draining board the other side.

‘All clear!’ she called back.

‘Now you, Rosie,’ said John. ‘I’ll give you a heave.’

Unfortunately, he heaved with rather too much enthusiasm, and there was a crash of falling saucepans, as Rosemary disappeared through the window. They all three froze, but the distant piano-playing never faltered.

‘There’s an even bigger pile of dirty washing-up than before,’ said Rosemary. ‘So look out!’

When John, too, was safely inside, they crept down the passage and through the green baize door, which made a ghostly‘whooshing’ as it swung to behind them. Across the hall they tiptoed, avoiding the shaft of light which shone through the half-open door of the music room, through which the sound of the piano still surged, and up the thickly carpeted stairs to the gallery.

The wavering circle of light from John’s torch steadied on the door leading to the turret. It was propped open, and on the bottom step was a bedroom candlestick with a box of matches in the saucer. As they climbed the spiral staircase, the sound of the piano grew fainter. When they reached the little landing at the top, they no longer found a jumble of junk, but an orderly pile of trunks and suitcases, with a dressmaker’s dummy seeming to stand guard beside the doorway to Carbonel’s prison. Rosemary ran across, and fell on her knees.

‘Carbonel! Are you there? It’s us, John and Rosemary!’ she called through the keyhole.

‘I am here,’ said a faint voice inside. ‘Where else should I be?’ it added bitterly.

‘But not for long. You’ll soon be free,’ said John. At this there was a chorus of squeaks from the Scrabbles. ‘Listen,’ went on John. ‘There isn’t much time. It’s nearly moonrise. This is important. When Mrs Witherspoon opens the door to let you go, slip out of the prison room as quickly as you can, but come to us. We shall be hiding behind the suitcases. It will be dark, so she won’t see you. Whatever you do, don’t go down the stairs till we give the signal.’

‘But the Cat’s Eye creatures?’ said Carbonel.

‘They can’t see in the dark either, whatever Mrs Witherspoon thinks,’ said John.

‘I knew that from the beginning,’ said Carbonel scornfully. ‘But their iron paws are sharp, and they can run, as I know to my cost.’ The Scrabbles burst into another bout of squeaking at this, and from the tapping of their claws on the wooden floor John and Rosemary could imagine them jumping excitedly up and down.

‘Whatever you do …’ began John. ‘What’s the matter?’ he went on. Rosemary was pulling his sleeve.

‘The piano has stopped,’ she whispered. ‘Mrs Witherspoon must be coming. Quickly, hide!’

They both ducked down behind the suitcases. There was complete silence except for the beating of their hearts. Even the Scrabbles were still. In the dim light that heralded the rising of the moon, they could just make out the darker shape that was the opening at the top of the spiral staircase. Suddenly, very faintly, they heard the striking of a match, and as the sound of mounting footsteps grew nearer, the opening became lighter, until Mrs Witherspoon stepped out on to the landing, holding the lighted candle above her head. For a moment, she stood there, framed against the darkness, the flickering candle-light glinting on her long crimson dress, on the braids of her black hair, and on Gullion, who sat perched upon her shoulder.

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‘Wait, my little warty one!’ she croodled, at the same time stroking his head with one finger. ‘When we have dealt with this obstinate animal, you shall have your bath in a silver bowl, with a scent of your very own choosing. Patience!’

With a whispering of silken skirts she strode across to the locked door.

‘Cat!’ she cried. ‘This is your last chance. Do you promise to be my servant, to do my bidding in all things? Answer, once and for all!’

‘And once and for all,’ replied Carbonel, and his voice was strong and clear, ‘as I have answered a hundred times before, NEVER!’

‘Think well, cat! Think well. Such magic wonders you would witness! Such wild, wicked adventures you would share, mounted on the swiftest broom, and you so black and handsome up behind!’ Her voice softened and became almost wheedling. ‘Obedience is not much to pay for all this glory! What do you say, cat?’

‘What do I say? Just this,’ cried Carbonel. ‘I want no share in your wicked triumphs, and your magic conjuring tricks! Never, never,never will I become slave to a common witch!’

‘Acommon witch?’ repeated Mrs Witherspoon, and her voice trembled with anger. ‘How dare you! For that insult, I would not keep you in my house one moment longer, for all of Solomon’s gold. Out! Out with you! And not a finger will I stir for the fate that may be waiting you outside these walls!’

As she spoke, Mrs Witherspoon lifted Gullion from her shoulder. John and Rosemary shrank back while she placed him carefully on the floor beside her.

‘Wait there, my pet, my gorgeous Gullion,’ she crooned, ‘while I unlock the door and send this foolish animal to his doom!’

She put the candlestick down beside him, and as she pulled up the key from the front of her crimson gown, John put out a careful hand and removed the box of matches. Still muttering angrily under her breath, she put the key in the lock. It turned with a grating sound, and the door began to move.‘Now!’ whispered John. Both of them blew, and the candle went out. There was an exclamation of annoyance from Mrs Witherspoon.

‘Bother, the matches have gone!’ she said, and then she laughed.

‘What does it matter if I am in the dark? The rest lies with my little Cat’s Eye creatures.’ The Scrabbles were already squeaking and squealing with excitement. ‘Chase this rude ungrateful animal out! See him to the door of the hall, where Grisana will be waiting, and do not bother to treathim gently!’

Now, the moment the door was unlocked, unnoticed by the Scrabbles, Carbonel had slipped silently from his prison to join John and Rosemary in their hiding place; and while the Scrabbles searched for him in the dark, with renewed squeakings, Dumpsie slipped from the safety of John’s jacket, and heading for the staircase let out a mocking challenge. ‘Miaowk!’

‘After him! After him, my little Cat’s Eyes!’ called Mrs Witherspoon, laughing wildly. Unable to tell one cat from another in the gloom, the Scrabbles streamed towards the sound of Dumpsie’s challenge.

Under his restraining hand, John could feel the tightening of Carbonel’s muscles, and guessed his reluctance to let someone else attract the danger directed to himself.

‘Not yet,’ whispered John. ‘Dumpsie can look after herself.’

As the tapping of the iron paws of pursuing Scrabbles faded into silence, a shaft of brilliant moonlight shone through the narrow window of the landing. By its light, they saw Mrs Witherspoon lift Gullion from the floor and place him on her shoulder once more.

‘The moon has risen. I have kept my word! Was that not well done, my treasure, my Gullion?’ she crooned. For a moment she stood perfectly still, while the toad lifted his warty head to her ear. Then she let out a cry. ‘What? You mean to say it is not Carbonel they are chasing to the door? Andit is those children again! It was they who blew out the candle? Why didn’t you warn me?’ She paused again as though listening to the toad’s reply. ‘But I couldn’t help it. I had to put you down while I unlocked the door. I can’t see the children now,’ she went on, looking around the landing in the moonlight. ‘Are you sure Carbonel is not still here? He may be lurking inside.’ She took a few paces into the prison room and looked round.

‘Quick,’ whispered Carbonel. ‘Close the door!’

John leapt out from his hiding place, closed the door with a clang, and turned the key.

‘Open the door!’ shouted Mrs Witherspoon from inside. ‘Let me out!’ She beat upon the unyielding wood with her fists.

‘Not yet!’ answered John. ‘Not until Carbonel is safely on his way back to Fallowhithe.’

‘You … you odious boy, thwarting my plans yet again! But I shall be revenged, as I warned you, never fear; and beware! It will be in a way you least expect!’ She laughed again, and it was not a pleasant sound, but her laughter was cut short by the voice of Grisana calling from the foot of thespiral stairs.

‘Carbonel!’ she yowled. ‘Come out! I know quite well you are up there!’

All this time he had been standing very straight and still, waiting for John to give him the signal that it was time for him to leave.

‘Not yet!’ replied John to his inquiring look. ‘Whatever you do, don’t go outside the house. It is surrounded by Broomhurst cats waiting to pounce and take you prisoner back to Broomhurst. We must play for time, until Calidor comes with a faithful army from Fallowhithe. He promised to be here by moonrise.’

(I wonder why he isn’t here already, thought Rosemary uneasily.)

‘What, wait, and be branded as a coward? Not I!’ said Carbonel. ‘My thanks must wait till this matter is settled, and believe me I am grateful to you, and the noble animal who led the Cat’s Eye creatures away. But from now on, you must leave me to fight my own battle. Cat against cat, claw against claw. This ismy war!’

As he spoke Grisana yowled again:‘Carbonel! Come out, I say! Or are you afraid? Must I come and fetch you?’

‘I am afraid of no one!’ called Carbonel. ‘But I come in my own time, not at your summons. You may do your wicked worst, Grisana!’

And with that he ran lightly down the stairs.

‘Open the door at once, and let me go!’ shouted Mrs Witherspoon. ‘I have an important appointment to keep at midnight.’ John and Rosemary looked at one another.

‘Who with?’ shouted John through the door.

‘With …’ began Mrs Witherspoon. ‘As a matter of fact, with a cement mixer. But you children wouldn’t understand.’

‘We understand all right!’ cried John. ‘To stop the builders building. All the more reason not to unlock the door yet! Come on, Rosie. Let’s go.’

The voice of Mrs Witherspoon followed them as they ran down the spiral stairs:‘I shall have my revenge, never fear!’ But they had other things to think about.

24. The Battle of Tucket Towers

‘WHY in the world doesn’t Calidor come?’ whispered Rosemary anxiously. ‘It’s after moonrise. But even if Carbonel won’t let us help, at least we can try to rescue Dumpsie from the Scrabbles. Come on.’

Together they hurried down to the gallery, pausing at the bottom of the spiral staircase just long enough to take in that Carbonel stood alone at the top of the stairs leading down to the hall, and that Grisana crouched a few steps below, staring up at him through half-closed eyes with bristling back and flattened ears. The hall below was a shifting, jostling mass of Broomhurst cats.

‘There’s only one door open on the landing,’ whispered John, peering cautiously out. ‘Dumpsie must have dashed in there. Come on, quickly, while they are all staring at Carbonel. Keep in the shadow.’

They slipped unnoticed out on to the gallery, and keeping close to the wall crept round to the open door. It led into a bedroom. By the light of the moon which flooded through the wide window, they saw the Scrabbles, massed in a semicircle at the foot of a four-post bed, gazing upwards. Peering down from the safety of the roof of the bed was a pair of shining green eyes.

‘Dumpsie?’ cried John. ‘Is that you?’

‘Are you all right?’ asked Rosemary anxiously.

‘Give or take a handful of fur, as good as ever I were,’ replied Dumpsie. ‘I told you as Scrabbles can’t climb. But I don’t think I’ll come down till you’ve got rid of ’em.’

‘That’s all very well, but how?’ asked John.

‘I couldn’t say, I’m sure,’ said Dumpsie, in an off-hand way. ‘I’ve done my share.’

‘And super bravely too!’ said Rosemary.

‘If I got a chair I could lift you down,’ said John.

The Scrabbles, twittering and squeaking among themselves, watched him suspiciously with their back eyes, while never ceasing to stare up at Dumpsie with their front eyes. As he turned to fetch a chair, with surprising speed a number of them detached themselves from the main body and quickly enclosed him in a circle, muttering angrily, and bouncing up and down on their bandy legs. When he tried to move, one of them nipped him sharply on his ankle.

‘Ow!’ said John. Not to be outdone, he tried to jump over the ring of Scrabbles. But even this did not work. Because they couldsee both ways, andmove both ways with surprising speed, they had already judged exactly where he would land, and he came down in a circle of the creatures, already formed to receive him. They were squeaking now in a lighter key. Could it be with laughter, wondered Rosemary? But John was very far from laughing.

‘Now I suppose I’m as stuck here as Dumpsie is up there,’ he said. ‘You’re the only one left, Rosie. It was you tinkering about with magic that brought the things alive. Can’t you do something about them now?’ He knew this was unfair as he said it.

‘I might be able to,’ she replied thoughtfully. ‘Not with magic though.’ She turned to the creatures, who watched her with unwinking shining eyes. ‘Scrabbles, do you remember it was me who wished you out of your holes in the road?’ A chorus of squeaks greeted this. ‘Well, so far, the holes you came from are still empty, but tomorrow a man is coming to fill them up with new studs. If that happens, you will be homeless, with nowhere to go to when all this is over!’

At this the Scrabbles forgot both their prisoners, and joined together in one agitated twittering, squeaking crowd. Shriller and shriller they grew, then, as though they had come to some agreement, suddenly fell silent, and without a sound, save the pattering of their paws, turned, and streamed out of the room. When John and Rosemary reached the door to peer after them, they had already disappeared.

‘Down the back stairs, I suppose,’ said John. ‘Phew! I’m glad that’s over. I’m sorry if I was beastly.’

When they turned back into the bedroom, Dumpsie had already jumped down from the four-post bed.

‘Them Scrabbles!’ she said. ‘Useful it must be, having no backwards.’

‘Look out, Rosie!’ said John suddenly. A cloud had drifted over the moon, and in the momentary darkness she had nearly stepped backwards into a large bowl filled with water, carefully arranged on a towel in the middle of the floor.

‘What a dotty place to leave it!’ said John.

‘I believe it’s Gullion’s bath, it’s a silver bowl!’ said Rosemary. ‘Just look at all those scent bottles lined up behind! Lavender, Musk, Violet …’ With a spurt of laughter she read the labels, picking up each bottle in turn.

‘What? No Toad of Cologne?’ said John, and they both began to giggle, but a bloodcurdling ‘Miaowk!’ outside cut their giggling short. They dashed to the door again. Carbonel still stood at the top of the stairs, but Grisana, slinking low, had crept up another step.

‘My ancient enemy Carbonel!’ she hissed. ‘The Witch-Woman lied to me. She promised that when the moon rose, is she set you free, you would walk unsuspecting into my trap!’

‘It is no fault of hers I did not,’ said Carbonel, looking down at her disdainfully. ‘But we have changed places.She is now the prisoner, andI am free!’

‘Free?’ repeated Grisana, and she laughed an ugly, bubbling cat-laugh.

‘You are on enemy ground and alone, have you forgotten? With the fiercest of Broomhurst fighters surrounding Tucket Towers to cut off your escape.’

‘I challenge the fiercest fighter of them all to single combat!’ cried Carbonel. There was a stirring and a muttering among the cats below.

‘Splodger! Splodger!’ yowked Grisana. ‘Do your duty!’ And the animal with black and orange patches they had seen at the bookshop, came loping up the stairs. She drew back and he paused for a moment on the step below Carbonel, his powerful body wriggling low as he prepared to leap. Then he hurled himself on his enemy. Locked together, spitting and struggling, they rolled and tumbled about the gallery, fur flying everywhere; Grisana urging Splodger on, and the Broomhurst cats streaming up the stairs with wild cries of encouragement.

‘At him!’

‘Pull him down!’

‘Roll him over!’ they cried. The two fighting animals separated and closed again and again, but at last, with a swinging blow, Carbonel sent Splodger rolling, vanquished, down the stairs. There was a howl of fury from the Broomhurst cats.

‘Avenge your comrade!’ called Grisana. ‘Defend your Queen!’ And the crowd of cats, who needed no encouragement, surged up the stairs and hurled themselves on Carbonel. He disappeared under an avalanche of cats, who clawed and tore each other in their eagerness to get at their fallen enemy.

‘You cowards!’ yelled John. ‘He’s one against the lot of you! Carbonel won his single combat in fair fight!’

‘Oh, why doesn’t Calidor come?’ cried Rosemary desperately.

‘Hark!’ said Dumpsie, whose cat’s ears, so much sharper than those of humans, heard something in the distance.

‘Cease your fighting!’ yelled Grisana, who had heard it too. ‘Stop, I say!’

And stop fighting they did, one by one, until Carbonel flung off the remaining half-dozen cats and rose to his feet, battered and torn, but with his old dignity undimmed.

‘Be quiet when I command, and listen!’ called Grisana.

Complete silence fell on Tucket Towers, but far away, nearer and nearer, came the sound of what most humans would have thought nothing but the moonlight caterwauling of idle cats.

‘What is that?’ said Grisana uneasily.

Carbonel stood alone, shaking each paw in turn to see they were all still in working order. Then he said lightly:‘That? It is the Marching Song of the Fallowhithe Alley Cats.’

‘With Calidor at their head!’ added Dumpsie. And this is the song they sang:

Who so quick with the unsheathed paw?

With a miew and miawk and a yowl!

With wits as sharp as each curving claw,

With a miew and a miawk and a yowl!

Who but the Alley Cats? Who but we?

Wandering far and scavenging free,

With a miew and a miawk and a yowl!

Who so silent on padded feet?

With a miew and a miawk and a yowl!

Who so invisible, who so fleet?

With a miew and miawk and a yowl!

Lords of the dustbin and messy back-yard,

A fig for the hearthrug cat’s snooty regard!

With a miew and a miawk and a yowl!

And the last‘yowl’ of the refrain of each verse was sung with a bloodcurdling yell, that struck fear into the very whiskers of their enemies.

‘Fallowhithe animals?’ hissed Grisana. ‘My hand-picked warriors are a match for any common alley cats! Off with you, my brave Broomhurst Brigade, and fight them to the death!’

Without a sound, the swarming animals turned and streamed down the stairs and out into the moonlight, followed at a suitably safe distance by their Queen.

‘Are you hurt, Carbonel?’ cried Rosemary.

‘Not so badly that I cannot greet Calidor and my brave army, and lead them into battle!’ he said, as he limped down the stairs.

‘If only we could help!’ said Rosemary. John shook his head.

‘I know. I’d give anything to do something, but don’t forget what Carbonel said: “This must bemy war. Cat against cat, and claw against claw.” We shall just have to watch what happens from the window here. You never know. There may be something we can still do.’

They were just in time to see the two armies join battle. They met with such force that they seemed to merge in one heaving, spitting mass.

‘However can they tell which cats are which?’ said Rosemary.

‘Easy. They smells different,’ explained Dumpsie shortly.

‘And now there’s such a blur of drifting fur that we can’t see anything properly,’ went on John.

When it cleared, the Alley Cats had disengaged, and were racing round and round the ring of Broomhurst animals who in turn encircled Tucket Towers. At a sudden word of command from Calidor, they charged once more. Over and over again they repeated this manoeuvre, with the Broomhurst cats growing more and more bemused as the attacking force raced round them faster and faster, giving no warning of where or when they would make their next assault. Gradually, one by one, the Broomhurst cats dropped out of the fight.

‘Look!’ whispered Rosemary suddenly. ‘Grisana has come inside again. What is she coming upstairs for?’

‘Melissa is following. Shut up and listen.’

‘Mama, where are you going?’ asked Melissa anxiously. ‘Surely you aren’t running away too?’

‘Running away? Never! But our army can’t hold out much longer. We shall be surrounded by our enemies and put to shame. There is only one chance, the Witch-Woman and the creature Gullion. So unfortunate that I have made it clear that I dislike toads, but perhaps they could be persuaded to do something to help by their magic arts …’

She began to walk wearily towards the spiral staircase.

‘How on earth can we stop her?’ said John desperately, turning to Rosemary. But she was not there. ‘Rosie, where on earth are you?’

As he spoke she burst out of the bedroom behind him, staggering under the weight of the large silver bowl. Just as Grisana reached the bottom of the turret stairs, with all her force Rosemary flung the water over the hurrying cat.

For a moment the sodden animal stood looking up at her, water streaming from every hair and whisker; then with a screech, she turned and raced down the stairs, through the hall and out of the door, followed by Melissa.

John and Rosemary leapt down the stairs after them, two at a time, out into the moonlight, just as the ring of Broomhurst animals finally broke. Seeing their dripping queen streaking for home, with a forlorn wail, they streamed after her, followed by the mocking laughter of the Alley Cats.

‘Shall we go after them?’ asked Calidor.

‘No,’ said Carbonel. ‘Let them go. They fought well, and our quarrel is not with them, but their queen. She will give no more trouble after this.’

25. The Last Wish

THEY were standing on the top of the steps leading up to the front door, John, Rosemary and Carbonel, with Calidor and Dumpsie purring softly to one another on the step below. The victorious Alley Cats were licking their wounds and tidying their whiskers on the carriage sweep beneath them.

‘But how did you manage to escape being spotted by Grisana’s sentries?’ asked John.

‘We came through the railway tunnel, and then the cutting. Not till then did we burst out singing,’ said Calidor. ‘We sing almost as well as we fight!’

‘Well done, my faithful Army!’ said Carbonel. He looked down with pride on the sea of cats below. A hundred pairs of glowing eyes looked up at him as a wisp of cloud drifted across the moon. ‘Well, done, my son,’ went on Carbonel. ‘And my undying gratitude to John and Rosemary, without whose help I should never have been saved from Grisana’s wicked schemes. Give them the cheers that they deserve. Salute to John and Rosemary!’ he cried.

The assembled cats let out an ear-splitting‘Mewrah! Mewrah! Mewrah!’

‘Thank you very much!’ said John. ‘But it’s Dumpsie who was really brave and clever.’

‘She limped all the way from Fallowhithe to Highdown with a wounded paw, to tell Calidor that Carbonel had disappeared.’

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‘And she tricked the Scrabbles into chasingher instead ofhim,’ said John.

Carbonel turned to Dumpsie and bowed his head.

‘You are as wise and brave as you are beautiful!’ he said. ‘I was wrong to forbid your friendship with my son.’

‘Then I can marry Dumpsie with your consent?’ asked Calidor eagerly.

‘Certainly. With my warmest approval,’ said Carbonel.

‘What do you say to that, Dumpsie, my dear?’ said Calidor. ‘Will you marry me?’

‘What do I say?’ replied Dumpsie with shining eyes. ‘Why yes, with all my heart. Dumpsie of the Dump I may be for ordinary, but Wellingtonia for best. There never will be a bester day than this. From now on, always, I shall be Wellingtonia!’

Salute to Prince Calidor and Princess Wellingtonia!’ cried Carbonel. ‘Give them three times three!’

Once more the silence was shattered by the Alley Cats’ deafening ‘Mewrahs!’

‘And now,’ said Carbonel, ‘we must return to Fallowhithe, to tell Queen Blandamour the good news!’

‘But Carbonel, shan’t we see you again?’ said Rosemary, and her eyes filled with tears.

‘Most certainly you will, Rosemary. Queen Blandamour and I are growing old. I have decided, that when the time comes, and it is not far distant, for us to leave the throne of my fathers, and for Calidor and Wellingtonia to take our place, it will be toyour hearthrug we shall retire.’

‘Yes, but I say …’ began John. But Rosemary burst out: ‘That would be simply gorgeous!’

‘Farewell!’ said Carbonel. ‘But not for very long.’

And so the procession set off for Fallowhithe: the Alley Cats in front, singing their Marching Song, then Carbonel, with head held high, and finally Calidor and Wellingtonia, side by side, their tails entwined at the tip, and their purring adding an undercurrent of sound to the Alley Cats’ singing, as the hum of the drone does to the music of the bag-pipes. John and Rosemary stood and watched them go. They did not move until the sound died away into silence. John gave a great sigh.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I suppose that’s that! But isn’t it just like Carbonel to say he is coming to live in your house without even asking if you want him?’

‘But I do!’ said Rosemary. ‘Oh, I do!’

‘Will your mother mind?’

‘I’m sure she won’t when she sees him,’ replied Rosemary, and sensing that John was feeling rather left out of this arrangement, she went on: ‘I expect he chose my hearthrug because it is in Fallowhithe, his own kingdom. So that he can still keep an eye on things.’

‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said John more cheerfully. ‘And of course, I shall see them both, Carbonel and Blandamour, whenever I come to stay with you. Well, now I suppose we must go and let Mrs Witherspoon out,’ he went on uneasily.

‘Oh, must we?’ said Rosemary.

‘Well, we can’t leave her locked up; besides, we promised!’

‘Couldn’t we get someone else to do it? Someone she isn’t so angry with?’

‘That’s not a bad idea,’ said John. ‘What about Miss Dibdin? She doesn’t move out till tomorrow — or today, I suppose it is. We can go by broom, and if there’s a light in the station we shall know she hasn’t gone to bed yet.’

Before the broom had wafted them halfway across the field, they spotted a primrose-coloured glow in the window of the Ladies’ Waiting Room.

Miss Dibdin heard the familiar clatter of the broom’s landing on the platform, and came out to greet them.

‘My dear children!’ she said. ‘You ought to be in bed. It’s past one o’clock!’

‘I know,’ said John, stifling a yawn. ‘We’ve come to ask if you will help us.’

‘Oh, please, please do!’ said Rosemary.

‘You see, Grisana is defeated, and Carbonel is on his way home to Fallowhithe. But we locked Gullion and Mrs Witherspoon in the tower room instead of Carbonel, and we wondered if … if …’

‘If I would go and let her out?’ Miss Dibdin’s eyes twinkled.

‘She’s very angry with us indeed. Would you mind awfully?’

‘Mind?’ said Miss Dibdin drily. ‘On the contrary, I should enjoy it! I will go just as soon as I have finished sweeping this floor. I must leave the station quite tidy before I move on to Mrs Bodkin’s married cousin’s. I’ve put the cones back at the crossroads, and stacked the half-invisible furniture in the old ticket office, and burned my notes. So off with you, before you fall fast asleep on the broom! That would never do.’

Quite how John and Rosemary managed to keep awake until the broom landed them on the patchwork quilt in Rosemary’s bedroom they never knew. They came down on its many-coloured surface with an unusually big bump and a series of diminishing bounces.

‘No wonder,’ said Rosemary when she picked up the broom. ‘The tape that keeps the twigs on has bust. It must have happened when it scraped along the window-sill as we came in.’ She gave an enormous yawn. ‘Do you think we shall be able to mend it?’ John gave an even bigger yawn. ‘And another funny thing,’ said Rosemary. ‘You remember the witch’s hat made of paper? Well, I stuck it on the shelf in my clothes cupboard, and when I looked at it this morning, it wasn’t paper any longer. It was stiff and furry!’

‘Let’s talk about it … in the morning,’ said John.

Safe at last in bed, he lay sleepily listening to the faint whispering of the tree outside his window. It reminded him of something.‘I know,’ he said to himself. ‘The rustle of Mrs Witherspoon’s long red skirt. What did she say? “I will have my revenge on you in the way you will mind most and least expect”?’ He burrowed deeper into the bedclothes. ‘I don’t see what she can do, now Carbonel is safe …’ And then he was fast asleep.

It was the smallest of sounds that began to wake him from a deep sleep; the turning of the handle of the bedroom door. Through drooping lids, he became aware that it was opening, very slowly, and Rosemary glided into the room. Her feet were bare and she was wearing her nightdress, but on her head she wore the tall black witch’s hat that once had been made of paper. She walked with a curious gliding motion towards the chair on which John had flung his clothes when he undressed.

‘I must be dreaming,’ he thought.

Rosemary picked up his trousers from the untidy heap, and after feeling in both the pockets drew out the tin box of Special Things. The lid made the little‘pop’ he knew so well when it was opened. She fumbled for something inside and, apparently unable to find it, made an exclamation of annoyance, and tipped the box upside down, so that all the Special Things were scattered on the floor. Then she flung the box away. John was wide awake now, and sitting bolt upright in bed.

‘Rosie!’ he said sharply. ‘Rosie! What on earth are you doing?’ She made no answer, but turned and glided from the room as silently as she had come. It was then that he noticed that she left behind that strange smell of stale flower water.

John jumped out of bed and began picking up his treasures from the floor. Whatever was she up to? What had she been looking for? Suddenly his heart gave an uncomfortable thump. He raced back to his bed and felt under his pillow. The Golden Gew-Gaw was still there.

‘That’s what she must have been looking for! There’s one wish left. I never told her where I had hidden it after the chase with Mrs Witherspoon. She must have thought it was still in the box.’ But whatever did she want it for? And why all this secrecy? It was all so unlike Rosemary.

‘If she’s walking in her sleep, I’d better go after her,’ said John to himself. As he crossed the room, he glanced out of the window. In the dim light of early dawn he was astonished to see her going rapidly down the drive, with the same strange gliding motion. Now thoroughly alarmed, John rushed downstairs. The front door was wide open. There was no sign of Rosemary in the drive. When he reached the gate, he saw her moving swiftly in the direction of the village.

‘Rosie! Rosie!’ he shouted. ‘Come back!’ But she took no notice. John pelted after her, but it was not until he had followed her through the village across the Market Square and halfway down Sheepshank Lane that he caught her up.

‘Rosie!’ he panted. ‘Where are you going?’

This time she did answer, but in a strange singsong, faraway voice, without turning her head as she hurried on.

‘To Tucket Towers. To Gullion and Mrs Witherspoon.’

‘But whatever for?’

‘To join them in their witchery! To be a partner in their magic power!’

‘Don’t do it! Don’t do it, Rosie!’ begged John.

‘I must,’ she answered. ‘Something draws me to them.’ She passed her hand over her eyes as though to clear them, but she did not slacken her speed.

‘What on earth has come over you?’ said John desperately.

‘I don’t know. But I must go. Gullion and Mrs Witherspoon are calling! Calling!’

Mrs Witherspoon and Gullion? Suddenly it all became clear!

‘Sothat’s what she meant by getting her revenge “in the way I shall mind most and least expect”,’ he said to himself. ‘Through Rosemary. Rosie to be a witch!’ That evil mixture of foolishness and twisted wisdom; of greed for power and riches, no matter what the consequences might be for others. ‘And all because she wants to be revenged onme! What can I do? Whatever can I do to stop her?’ he said to himself in desperation. Rosemary had turned into the drive of Tucket Towers. She seemed unaware of the rough surface, which cut into John’s bare feet. Desperately he ran to keepup with the increasing speed of her rapid onward glide.

Suddenly, even more painful than the stony drive, he felt something sharp as a needle prick into the palm of his clenched hand. He looked down and opened his fingers. It was the stone of the Golden Gew-Gaw, which he was still clutching.‘Of course! The seventh wish!’ he said to himself, as he slipped the ring on to his finger. The crimson stone glowed in the gloom of the drive like a live coal.

Then he began to think as he had never thought before. This must be the perfect wish. It must cover all the dangers threatening Rosemary, without any of the usual mocking twists of magic the ring seemed to delight in. They had reached the end of the drive before he could begin to get the shape of a wishing rhyme.

‘It’s coming, I think it’s coming,’ he said to himself. ‘What rhymes with “magic powers”? Bowers … showers …? That won’t do.’ Now, Rosemary had reached the steps leading to the front door. ‘Of course!’ said John. ‘Tucket Towers!’ Rosemary hurried up the steps, and as she put her hand on the iron bell-pull, John shouted at the top of his voice:

‘I’m not much good at making rhymes

Although I’ve tried to many times.

One last wish I beg you do,

Send Gullion to Timbuktu!

Undo all the spells he’s made

With Mrs Witherspoonses’ aid

End once for all the magic powers

Of all who live at Tucket Towers.’

For a moment Rosemary paused, then her hand slackened on the bell-pull. As it clanged in the distance, she slumped down upon the step. John rushed up and fell on his knees beside her.

‘Rosie! Rosie! Are you all right? Please, please answer me!’

Slowly she raised her head and opened her eyes.‘Where ever am I?’ she said, and looked about her.

‘At Tucket Towers,’ said John. ‘Sort of … sleep-walking!’

‘I had a horrid dream,’ she said, rubbing her eyes. ‘I’m so glad I’ve woken up.’

‘So am I!’ said John, grinning from ear to ear.

‘But whatever made me come to Tucket Towers?’

‘Listen,’ John began. ‘I had to use the Golden Gew-Gaw’s last wish to undo Mrs Witherspoon’s magic …’ He looked at the ring on his finger, expecting to see the smouldering red stone set in the shining band. ‘Hallo!’ he said in surprise. ‘It isn’t the Golden Gew-Gaw any longer.It’s just a dull old cracker ring made of plastic, with a bit of glass for a stone!’

Rosemary turned to pick up the witch’s hat which had fallen on the step beside her. ‘It isn’t hard and furry any more,’ she said sadly. ‘It’s just a crumpled old paper cap. The sort of thing you might get in a cracker at any party.’

‘I suppose, after its last wish …’ began John. He stopped as a key grated in the lock and the door swung open. There stood Mrs Witherspoon. But not the young woman they had left locked up in the tower. This was the old Mrs Witherspoon, with a pale wrinkled face and wild white hair. She was wearing a shabby woollen dressing-gown. Her eyes widened when she saw them.

‘Good gracious, children! Whatever are you doing here? And in your night clothes!’

‘I think I’ve been walking in my sleep,’ said Rosemary.

‘And I followed her,’ said John. ‘But I didn’t catch her up until she’d got here.’

‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Mrs Witherspoon. ‘The grandfather clock suddenly seemed to go mad, a few minutes ago. It clanged and twangled, and made such a din it woke me up. If I hadn’t come down to see what was the matter I should never have heard you, you poor little things! But you mustbe simply frozen with no shoes. Now come along in and get warm, and tell me all about it.’ She seemed so different from the Mrs Witherspoon they had known, that they followed her without further thought. The grand furniture, the silver candlesticks and the twinkling chandelier had gone, together with the pictures in their golden frames. Were they the same spiders as before, wondered John, busily weaving their webs on the antlers over each door? He nearly tripped over the worn carpet as he gazed about him.

Mrs Witherspoon stirred the smouldering embers of the kitchen fire and, warmed by the leaping flames, and mugs of steaming cocoa, but most of all by her kindly smile, John told her who they were, and where they came from.

‘But your poor uncle! Whatever will he think about you being out so late?’

Rosemary wriggled uncomfortably.‘Well, we’d rather he didn’t find out,’ she said, and looked at Mrs Witherspoon appealingly.

‘And even if he does,’ said John. ‘We are out very early, not very late, which doesn’t sound so bad somehow.’ Mrs Witherspoon’s eyes twinkled.

‘I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘But surely he should be told about the sleep-walking?’

‘Oh,please no!’ said John. ‘We’d much rather not. You see, it’s so difficult to explain.’

‘Then there is something else besides the sleep-walking behind all this?’ Mrs Witherspoon asked, her eyebrows raised. John and Rosemary both nodded. Somehow they felt they could trust her. ‘And it’s a secret?’ They nodded again even more vigorously. After a minute’s frowning thought shewent on: ‘Well, whatever it is, I think you must promise me never to do it again, and I won’t tell.’

‘We promise!’ they said. ‘Never again.’

‘Good,’ said Mrs Witherspoon briskly. ‘Now then, if you will wait while I put on some clothes I will take you home. I should not feel easy in my mind if I did not see you safely to the door of Roundels. You can’t possibly walk with bare feet. I’m afraid I have no car, so you will have to make do with standing on the bar at the back of my new tricycle.’

So that was how they went home. Their progress was slow but very stately. The birds, which were twittering sleepily when they started, were in full-throated song when they reached the gate, and said good-bye to Mrs Witherspoon.

‘It’s going to be a beautiful day!’ she said. ‘Come and see me sometime when you come to stay at Highdown.’

‘We should love to!’ said John and Rosemary, and they really meant it.

Miss Dibdin did find just the right house to retire to in Highdown with her friend Mrs Cantrip. They are settled there very happily, and are devoted to their cat, who is called Mattins. (His whiskers straightened in time.) Miss Dibdin has taken a part-time job helping Mr Sprules in his second-hand book shop, and is firm friends with his cat Splodger. Sometimes she wonders how one of his ears got so badly torn, but of course he can’t tell her. Mrs Cantrip is a busy member of the Women’s Institute. They both of them often call on their friend Mrs Witherspoon, the owner of that flourishing private hotel, Tucket Towers.

And Gullion? As no one bothers to listen to his wicked whisperings in Timbuktu, it is to be hoped his power is ended.

Mrs Featherstone sometimes wonders why Rosemary brushes the hearthrug in the sitting-room with such care every day, as she does not seem interested in any other kind of housework. Even more surprising is that John always helps her when he comes to stay.

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Слэй Барбара Carbonel: The King Of Cats. Kingdom Of Carbonel. Carbonel And Calidor