Charmed Life - Diana Wynne Jones [59]
“I think running away is fun,” said Cat.
“Wait till we’re spending the night in a rat-infested barn,” said Janet. “Flitterings and squeakings. Are there ghouls and goblins in this wor—? Oh, look! There’s a car coming! Thumb—no, wave. They probably don’t understand thumbing.”
They waved furiously at the big black car that was whispering and bouncing along the ruts towards them. To their delight, it sighed to a stop beside them. The nearest window rolled down. They got a very rude shock when Julia put her head out of it.
Julia was pale and agitated. “Oh please come back!” she said. “I know you ran away because of me, and I’m sorry! I swear I won’t do it anymore!”
Roger put his head out of the back window. “I kept telling her you would,” he said. “And she didn’t believe me. Do come back. Please.”
The driver’s door had opened by then. Millie came hurrying around the long bonnet of the car. She looked much more homely than usual, because her skirts were looped up for driving and she was wearing stout shoes and an old hat. She was as agitated as Julia. When she reached Janet and Cat, she flung an arm around each of them and hugged them so hard and thankfully that Cat nearly fell over.
“You poor darlings! Another time you get unhappy, you must come and tell me at once! And what a thing too! I was so afraid you’d got into real trouble, and then Julia told me it was her. I’m extremely vexed with her. A girl did that to me once and I know how miserable it made me. Now, please, please come back. I’ve got a surprise waiting for you at the Castle.”
There was nothing Cat and Janet could do but climb into the back of the car and be driven back to the Castle. They were miserable. Cat’s misery was increased by the fact that he began to feel sick from the moment Millie started to bump the car backwards down the lane to a gate where she could turn it. The smell of blackberry coming from Janet’s squashy hat made him feel worse.
Millie, Roger, and Julia were very relieved to have found them. They chattered joyfully the whole way. Through his sickness, Cat got the impression that, although none of them said so, what they were particularly glad about was to have found Janet and Cat before Chrestomanci came to hear they were gone. This did not make either Cat or Janet feel any better.
In five minutes, the car had whispered up the avenue and stopped at the main door of the Castle. The butler opened it for them just, Cat thought sadly, as Gwendolen would have wished. The butler, furthermore, ceremoniously took Janet’s leaking hat away from her. “I’ll see that these get to Cook,” he said.
Millie told Janet that her dress would just pass muster and hurried them to what was called the Little Drawing Room. “Which means, of course, that it’s a mere seventy feet square,” she said. “Go in. Tea will be there for you.”
They went in. In the middle of the big, square room, a wispy, skinny woman in beaded black clothes was sitting nervously on the edge of a gilded chair. She jumped around when the door opened.
Cat forgot he felt sick. “Mrs. Sharp!” he shouted, and ran to hug her.
Mrs. Sharp was overjoyed, in spite of her nervousness. “It’s my Cat, then! Here, stand back, let me look at you, and you too, Gwendolen, love. My word, you do wear fine clothes to go playing about in! You’re fatter, Cat. And Gwendolen, you’ve gone thin. I can understand that, dear, believe me! And would you just look at the tea they’ve brought for the three of us!”
It was a marvelous tea, even better than the tea on the lawn. Mrs. Sharp, in her old greedy way, settled down to eat as much as she could, and to gossip hard. “Yes, we came up on the train yesterday, Mr. Nostrum and me. After I got your postcard, Cat, I couldn’t rest till I’d had a look at you both, and seeing as how my contacts and other things have been paying nicely, I felt I owed it to myself. They treated me like royalty when I turned up here at the door too. I can’t fault them. But I wish I cared for it in