Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [45]
“Not at all,” said Cat. But he did rather. Janet could not have been more of a burden if she had been sitting on his shoulders with her legs wrapped around his chest. And to crown it all, it seemed as if there had been no need for his false confession. He took Janet to the ruins of the tree house because he wanted something else to think about. Janet was enchanted with it. She swung herself up into the horse chestnut to look at it, and Cat felt rather as you do when someone else gets into your railway carriage. “Be careful,” he called crossly.
There was a strong rending noise up in the tree. “Drat!” said Janet. “These are ridiculous clothes for climbing trees in.”
“Can’t you sew?” Cat called as he climbed up too.
“I despise it as female bondage,” said Janet. “Yes, I can, actually. And I’m going to have to. It was both petticoats.” She tested the creaking floor that was all that remained of the house and stood up on it, trailing two different colors of frill below the hem of Gwendolen’s dress. “You can see into the village from here. There’s a butcher’s cart just turning in to the Castle drive.”
Cat climbed up beside her and they watched the cart and the dappled horse pulling it.
“Don’t you have cars at all?” Janet asked. “Everyone has cars in my world.”
“Rich people do,” said Cat. “Chrestomanci sent his to meet us off the train.”
“And you have electric light,” said Janet. “But everything else is old-fashioned compared with my world. I suppose people can get what they want by witchcraft. Do you have factories, or long-playing records, or high-rise buildings, or television, or airplanes at all?”
“I don’t know what airplanes are,” said Cat. He had no idea what most of the other things were either, and he was bored with this talk.
Janet saw he was. She looked around for a change of subject and saw clusters of big green horse chestnut cases hanging all around them at the ends of the branches. The leaves there were already singed-looking around the edges, suggesting that the chestnuts could not be far off ripe. Janet edged out along a branch and tried to reach the nearest cluster of green cases. They bobbed at the tips of her fingers, just out of reach. “Oh, dachshunds!” she said. “They look almost ripe.”
“They aren’t,” said Cat. “But I wish they were.” He took a lathe out of the wreckage of the house and slashed at the chestnut cases with it. He missed, but he must have shaken them. Eight or so dropped off the tree and went plomp on the ground below.
“Who says they’re not ripe?” said Janet, leaning down.
Cat craned out of the tree and saw brown shiny chestnuts showing in the split green cases. “Oh, hurray!” He came down the tree like a monkey, and Janet crashed after him, with her hair full of twigs. They scooped up the chestnuts greedily—wonderful chestnuts with grain on them like the contours in a map.
“A skewer!” Janet moaned. “My kingdom for a skewer! We can thread them on my bootlaces.”
“Here’s a skewer,” said Cat. There was one lying on the ground by his left hand. It must have fallen out of the tree house.
They drilled chestnuts furiously. They took the laces out of Gwendolen’s second-best boots. They discovered the rules of the game were the same in both their worlds, and they went to the formal garden and held a battle royal there on the gravel path. As Janet firmly smashed Cat’s last chestnut and yelled, “Mine! Mine’s a sevener now!” Millie came around a corner past a yew tree and stood laughing at them.
“Do you know, I wouldn’t have thought the chestnuts were ripe yet. But it’s been a lovely summer.”
Janet looked at her in consternation. She had no idea who this plump lady in the beautiful flowered silk dress could be.
“Hallo, Millie,” said Cat. Not that this helped Janet much.
Millie smiled and opened the handbag she was carrying. “There are three things Gwendolen needs, I think. Here.” She handed Janet two safety pins and a packet of bootlaces. “I always