text stringlengths 0 16.8k |
|---|
'Oh no, Peterkin will be all right with me!' |
And then we said good-bye, and 'thank you very much for inviting us.' And Pete actually said -- |
'May we come again soon, please?' |
His ideas of politeness were rather original, weren't they? |
But Mrs. Wylie was quite pleased. |
'Certainly, my dear. I shall count on your doing so. And I am glad you spoke of it, for I wanted to tell you that I am going to London the end of this next week for a fortnight. Will you tell your dear mamma so, and say that I shall come to see her on my return, and then we must fix on another afternoon? I am very plea... |
She was so kind that I felt I had been rather horrid, for I had enjoyed it all very much. And I said as nicely as I could, that I'd like to come again, only I hoped we didn't bother her. She beamed all over at that, and Peterkin evidently approved of it too, for he grinned in a queer patronising way he has sometimes, a... |
I was just going to pull him up for it after we had got on our coats and caps, and were outside and the door shut, but before I had got farther than -- 'I say, youngster,' -- he startled me rather by saying, in a very melancholy tone -- |
'It's too bad, Giles, isn't it? Her going away, and us hearing nothing of the little girl. I really thought she'd have asked her to tea too.' |
'How you muddle your "her's" and "she's"!' I said. But of course I understood him. 'I think you muddle yourself too. If there's a mystery, and you know you'd be very disappointed if there wasn't, you couldn't expect the little girl to come to tea just as if everything was quite like everybody else about her.' |
'No, that's true,' said he, consideringly. 'P'raps she's invisible sometimes, or p'raps she's like the "Light Princess," that they had to tie down for fear she'd float away, or p'raps -- -- ' |
'She's invisible to us, anyway,' I interrupted, for, as I said, I was getting rather tired of Pete's fancies about the little girl, 'and so -- -- ' |
But just as I got so far, we both stopped -- we were passing the railing of the little girl's house at that moment, and voices talking rather loudly caught our ears. Peterkin touched my arm, and we stood quite still. No one could see us, it was too dark, and there was no lamp just there, though some light was streaming... |
It was so queer, our hearing the voices and almost seeing into the room, just as we had been making up our minds that we'd never know anything about the little girl; it seemed so queer, that we didn't, at first, think of anything else. It wasn't for some minutes, or moments, certainly, that it came into my head that we... |
What we heard was this -- |
'No, I don't want any more tea. I'd better go to bed. It's so dull, Nana.' |
Then another voice replied -- it came from some one further back in the room, but we could not distinguish the words -- |
'There aren't any stars. You may as well shut the window. And stars aren't much good. I want some one to play with me. Other little -- ' but just then we saw the shadow of some one crossing the room, and the window -- it was a glass-door kind of window like the ones up above, which opened on to the balcony, for there w... |
Pete gave a deep sigh, and I felt that he was looking at me, though it was too dark to see, and there was no lamp just there. He wanted to know what I thought. |
'Come along,' I said, and we walked on. |
'Did you hear?' asked Peterkin at last. 'She said she wanted somebody to play with her.' |
'Yes,' I said, 'it is rather queer. You'd think Mrs. Wylie might have made friends with her, and invited her to tea. But it's no good our bothering about it,' and I walked a little faster, and began to whistle. I did not want Pete to go on again talking a lot about his invisible princess, for such she seemed likely to ... |
It was far easier, however, to get anything into Peterkin's fancy than to get it out again, as I might have known by experience. We had not gone far before I felt him tugging at my arm. |
'Don't walk so fast, Gilley,' he said -- poor, little chap, he was quite breathless with trying to keep up with me, so I had to slacken a bit, -- 'and do let me talk to you. When we get home I shan't have a chance -- not till to-morrow morning in bed, I daresay; for they'll all be wanting to hear about Mrs. Wylie, and ... |
I did not so much mind about that part of it, but I did not want to be awakened before dawn the next morning to listen to all he'd got to say. So I thought I might as well let him come out with some of it. |
'What do you want to talk about?' I said. |
'Oh! of course, you know,' he replied. 'It's about the poor little girl. I am so dreffully sorry for her, Gilley, and I want to plan something. It's no good asking Mrs. Wylie. We'll have to do something ourselves. I'm afraid the people she's with lock her up, or something. P'raps they daren't let her go out, if there's... |
'Well, then, the best thing to do is to lock her up,' I said sensibly. |
But that wasn't Peterkin's way of looking at things. |
'It's never like that in my stories,' he said -- and I know he was shaking his curly head, -- 'and some of them are very, very old -- nearly as old as Bible stories, I believe; so they must be true, you see. There's always somebody that comes to break the -- the -- I forget the proper word.' |
'The enchantment, you mean,' I said. |
'No, no; a shorter word. Oh, I know -- the spell,' he replied. 'Yes, somebody comes to break the spell. And that's what we've got to do, Gilley. At least, I'm sure I've got to, and you must help me. You see, it's all been so funny. The parrot knows, I should think, for I'm sure he's partly fairy. But, very likely, he d... |
'Perhaps he's the bad fairy himself,' I interrupted, half joking, but rather interested, all the same, in Peterkin's ideas. |
'Oh no,' he replied, 'I know he's not, and I'm sure Mrs. Wylie has nothing to do with the bad fairy.' |
'Then why do you think she won't talk about the little girl, or invite her, or anything?' I asked. |
Pete seemed puzzled. |
'I don't know,' he said. 'There's a lot to find out. P'raps Mrs. Wylie doesn't know anything about the spell, and has just got some stupid, common reason for not wanting us to play with the little girl, or p'raps' -- and this was plainly a brilliant idea -- 'p'raps the spell's put on her without her knowing, and stops ... |
But I had not time to answer, for we had got to our own door by now, and it was already opened, as some tradesman was giving James a parcel. So we ran in. |
Chapter V |
'Stratagems' |
I REALLY don't quite know what made me listen to Peterkin's fancies about his invisible princess, as I got into the habit of calling her. It was partly, I suppose, because it amused me -- we had nothing much to take us up just then: there was no skating that winter, and the weather was dull and muggy -- and partly that... |
He went about, dreaming of ogres and magicians, and all the rest, so much, that I scarcely think anything marvellous would have surprised him. If I had suddenly shot up to the ceiling, and called out that I had learnt how to fly, I don't believe he would have been startled; or if I had shown him a purse with a piece of... |
So the idea of an enchanted little girl did not strike us as at all out of the way. |
We did not talk about her any more that night after we had been at Mrs. Wylie's, for we had to hurry up to get neat again to come down to the drawing-room to mamma. Blanche and Elf were already there when we came in, and they, and mamma too, were full of questions about how we'd enjoyed ourselves, and about the parrot,... |
And then Pete and Elf went off to bed, and when I went up he was quite fast asleep, and if he hadn't been, I could not have spoken to him because of my promise, you know. |
He made up for it the next morning, however. |
I suppose he had had an extra good night, for I felt him looking at me long before I was at all inclined to open my eyes, or to snort for him to know I was awake. And when at last I did -- it's really no good trying to go to sleep again when you feel there's somebody fidgeting to talk to you -- there he was, his eyes a... |
I couldn't help feeling rather cross, and yet I had a contradictory sort of interest and almost eagerness to hear what he had to say. I suppose it was a kind of love of adventure that made me join him in his fancies and plans. I knew that his fancies were only fancies really, but still I felt as if we might get some fu... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.