Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [15]
“Thank you,” Cat said fervently. He felt as strongly about it as Gwendolen—more, in fact, because he hated cocoa.
“Oh, no trouble, I’m sure!” Mary said, in what was certainly a sarcastic way, and the two maids went out.
For a while, nobody said anything. Then Roger said to Cat, “Pass the marmalade, please.”
“You’re not supposed to have it,” said Gwendolen, whose temper had not improved.
“Nobody will know if I use one of your knives,” Roger said placidly.
Cat passed him the marmalade and his knife too. “Why aren’t you allowed it?”
Julia and Roger looked at one another in a mild, secretive way. “We’re too fat,” Julia said, calmly taking the knife and the marmalade after Roger had done with them. Cat was not surprised when he saw how much marmalade they had managed to pile on their bread. Marmalade stood on both slices like a sticky brown cliff.
Gwendolen looked at them with disgust, and then, rather complacently, down at her trim linen dress. The contrast was certainly striking. “Your father is such a handsome man,” she said. “It must be such a disappointment to him that you’re both pudgy and plain, like your mother.”
The two children looked at her placidly over their cliffs of marmalade. “Oh, I wouldn’t know,” said Roger.
“Pudgy is comfortable,” said Julia. “It must be a nuisance to look like a china doll, the way you do.”
Gwendolen’s blue eyes glared. She made a small sign under the edge of the table. The bread and thick marmalade whisked itself from Julia’s hands and slapped itself on Julia’s face, marmalade side inward. Julia gasped a little. “How dare you insult me!” said Gwendolen.
Julia peeled the bread slowly off her face and then fumbled out a handkerchief. Cat supposed she was going to wipe her face. But she let the marmalade stay where it was, trundling in blobs down her plump cheeks, and simply tied a knot in the handkerchief. She pulled the knot slowly tight, looking meaningly at Gwendolen while she did so. With the final pull, the half-full jug of cocoa shot steaming into the air. It hovered for a second, and then shot sideways to hang just above Gwendolen’s head. Then it began to joggle itself into tipping position.
“Stop it!” gasped Gwendolen. She put up a hand to ward the jug off. The jug dodged her and went on tipping. Gwendolen made another sign and gasped out strange words. The jug took not the slightest notice. It went on tipping until cocoa was brimming in the very end of its spout. Gwendolen tried to lean out sideways away from it. The jug simply joggled along in the air until it was hanging over her head again.
“Shall I make it pour?” Julia asked. There was a bit of a smile under the marmalade.
“You dare!” screamed Gwendolen. “I’ll tell Chrestomanci on you! I’ll—oh!” She sat up straight again, and the jug followed her faithfully. Gwendolen made another grab at it, and it dodged again.
“Careful. You’ll make it spill. And what a shame about your pretty dress,” Roger said, watching complacently.
“Shut up, you!” Gwendolen shouted at him, leaning out the other way so that she was nearly in Cat’s lap. Cat looked up nervously as the jug came and hovered over him too. It seemed to be going to pour.
But, at that moment, the door opened and Chrestomanci came in, wearing a flowered silk dressing gown. It was a red and purple dressing gown, with gold at the neck and sleeves. It made Chrestomanci look amazingly tall, amazingly thin, and astonishingly stately. He could have been an emperor, or a particularly severe bishop. He was smiling as he came in, but the smile vanished when he saw the jug.
The jug tried to vanish too. It fled back to the table at the sight of him, so quickly that cocoa slopped out of it onto Gwendolen’s dress—which may or may not have been an accident. Julia and Roger both looked stricken. Julia unknotted her handkerchief as if for dear life.
“Well, I was coming in to say good morning,” Chrestomanci said. “But I see that it isn’t.” He looked from the jug to Julia’s marmalade-glistening