Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [29]
“Don’t encourage her. You know what she’s like,” said Euphemia.
“Be careful I don’t start on you,” Gwendolen said sourly.
Roger found out privately from Mary what had happened to the other loaves. One had become a white rabbit, one had been an ostrich egg—which had burst tremendously all over the bootboy—and another a vast white onion. After that, Gwendolen’s invention had run out and she had turned the rest into cheese. “Old bad cheese, though,” Roger said, giving honor where honor was due.
It was not known whether Chrestomanci also gave honor where it was due because, once again, he said not a word to anyone.
The next day was Saturday. Gwendolen caught the farmer delivering the churn of milk the Castle used daily. The breakfast cocoa tasted horrible.
“I’m beginning to get annoyed,” Julia said tartly. “Daddy may take no notice, but he drinks tea with lemon.” She stared meaningly at Gwendolen. Gwendolen stared back, and there was that invisible feeling of clashing Cat had noticed when Gwendolen had wanted her mother’s earrings from Mrs. Sharp. This time, however, Gwendolen did not have things all her own way. She lowered her eyes and looked peevish.
“I’m getting sick of getting up early, anyway,” she said crossly.
This, from Gwendolen, simply meant she would do something later in the day in future. But Julia thought she had beaten Gwendolen, and this was a mistake.
They had lessons on Saturday morning, which annoyed Gwendolen very much. “It’s monstrous,” she said to Mr. Saunders. “Why do we have to be tormented like this?”
“It’s the price I have to pay for my holiday on Wednesday,” Mr. Saunders told her. “And, speaking of tormenting, I prefer you to bewitch something other than the milk.”
“I’ll remember that,” Gwendolen said sweetly.
7
I T RAINED on Saturday afternoon. Gwendolen shut herself into her room and, once again, Cat did not know what to do. He wrote to Mrs. Sharp on the back of his postcard of the Castle, but that only took ten minutes, and it was too wet to go out and mail it. Cat was hanging about at the foot of his stairs, wondering what to do now, when Roger came out of the playroom and saw him.
“Oh, good,” said Roger. “Julia won’t play soldiers. Will you?”
“But I can’t—not like you do,” Cat said.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Roger. “Honestly.”
But it did. No matter how cunningly Cat deployed his lifeless tin army, as soon as Roger’s soldiers began to march, Cat’s men fell over like ninepins. They fell in batches and droves and in battalions. Cat moved them furiously this way and that, grabbing them by handfuls and scooping them with the lid of the box, but he was always on the retreat. In five minutes he was reduced to three soldiers hidden behind a cushion.
“This is no good,” said Roger.
“No, it isn’t,” Cat agreed mournfully.
“Julia,” said Roger.
“What?” said Julia. She was curled in the shabbiest armchair, managing to suck a lollipop, to read a book called In the Hands of the Lamas, and to knit, all at the same time. Her knitting, hardly surprisingly, looked like a vest for a giraffe which had been dipped in six shades of gray dye.
“Can you make Cat’s soldiers move for him?” said Roger.
“I’m reading,” said Julia, around the edges of the lollipop. “It’s thrilling. One of them’s got lost and they think he’s perished miserably.”
“Be a sport,” said Roger. “I’ll tell you whether he did perish, if you don’t.”
“If you do, I’ll turn your underpants to ice,” Julia said amiably. “All right.” Without taking her eyes off her book or the lollipop out of her mouth, she fumbled out her handkerchief and tied a knot in it. She laid the knotted handkerchief on the arm of her chair and went on knitting.
Cat’s fallen soldiers picked themselves up from the floor and straightened their tin tunics. This was a great improvement, though it was still not entirely satisfactory. Cat could not tell his soldiers what to do. He had to shoo them into position with his hands. The soldiers did not seem happy.