Bed-Knob and Broomstick (5 page)

   
The inspector smiled. "I'm sorry, Sergeant, if I've misjudged you. But
you've told me a very tall story, you know. If the front gate is locked, there's
absolutely no way out of the yard."
"I know, sir."
"And there's this business of the bed. . . ."
"Yes, sir," said the sergeant.

   
"These children couldn't be considered in any way as delinquents. They
were just having some prank, isn't that so?"
"Yes, sir." Suddenly a curious, half-shy look came into the sergeant's
eyes. He twisted his hat round in his hands. He looked at the inspector as if
he hardly dared put his thought into words.

   
"Something just occurred to me, sir." The sergeant was blushing.

   
"Well?"
"The little girl, when I asked 'er 'ow she brought the bed up from Bedfordshire
. . ."
"Yes?"
The sergeant dropped his voice. "She said she brought it up by magic."
For a moment the inspector did not speak; then, "Really, Sergeant-"
he said weakly.

   
The sergeant's blush became deeper. "I know, sir," he said humbly.

   
"Really, Sergeant," went on the inspector, standing up and beginning
to gather together the papers he would need in court. "You're a grown man,
now. You must curb these fancies."
CAREY HAS AN IDEA
It was with a feeling of great relief that the children found themselves back
again in Paul's bedroom. Carey and Charles barely had time to wash themselves
and to dress Paul before Elizabeth sounded the gong for breakfast. Paul nearly
fell asleep over his porridge, and Carey and Charles felt guilty when, later
on, Elizabeth thanked them for having made the beds they hadn't slept in. Their
adventure did not seem like a dream, but it seemed as if they had been away
for much longer than one night, and all of them felt very sleepy.

   
"Let's go down and see Miss Price this morning," suggested Carey,
"and this afternoon let's go up to the hayloft and sleep till teatime,"
They found Miss Price kneeling at her flower border, planting. She wore a large
straw hat and a canvas apron with pockets. It was a lovely day, and the scented
garden lay a-dream in the blazing warmth of the sun.

   
"Well," said Miss Price, sitting back and staring anxiously at their
flushed, perspiring faces, "did it work?"
"Yes," said Carey. "It worked like magic-I mean, like a charm-I
mean. . . . Oh, Miss Price, it did work." She
flung herself down on the grass beside Miss Price.

   
"Did you enjoy yourselves?" asked Miss Price rather anxiously. "Paul
looks as though he can hardly keep his eyes open."
Carey pulled up a little tuft of the sweet-smelling lawn.

   
"Well, we didn't exactly enjoy ourselves," she admitted, and tried
to push the tuft back again.

   
"You didn't!" exclaimed Miss Price. She looked worried.

   
Then out came the whole story. The children often interrupted each other, and
sometimes they spoke in chorus, but gradually Miss Price pieced the pattern
together. She became graver and graver as they described their adventures with
the law and looked aghast when she heard they had actually been taken to the
police station. She looked sad when Charles told her how the prison van had
brought the bed into the yard and how they had stared at it through the barred
window, but she brightened considerably when they got to the bit about the sergeant's
garden. Carey copied Mrs. Watkins's voice saying, "Well, pop down and look
at the bird, then, but don't you touch them dahlias." They didn't have
to describe the rest. Miss Price knew too well what would happen once they were
in reach of the bed. "Did anyone see you go?" she asked.

   
"No," said Carey, "that's when the sergeant went inside for his
cup of tea."
"Did the bed go at once?"
"Yes, like a flash. The second that Paul wished. We'd hardly got on it."
"Well," said Miss Price thoughtfully, "let's hope they don't
ring up your mother."
"Mother would say it couldn't have been us," pointed out
Charles. "She'd know we couldn't have been in London."
"That's true, Charles," agreed Carey. "And Aunt Beatrice would
say at once that we were here. We couldn't have been in London, possibly."
Paul looked bewildered. "Then where were we?" he asked.

   
"Oh, Paul!" exclaimed Carey impatiently. She turned her back on him
and watched Miss Price, who had begun once more to dig holes with the trowel.
"What are you planting, Miss Price?"
"Edelweiss," said Miss Price absently. She sighed. "Well, all's
well that ends well. You were lucky. It might have been worse, a good deal worse."
Carey watched Miss Price insert a silvery plant in the hole, and Charles rolled
over sleepily to observe a formation of Valiants against the peaceful sky.

   
"I thought edelweiss only grew above the snow line," Carey remarked
wonderingly.

   
Miss Price became rather pink and pursed up her lips. "It grows quite well
in my garden," she said shortly.

   
Carey was silent. After she had thought awhile, she said carelessly, "Are
you showing anything in the flower show, Miss Price?"
Miss Price's color deepened. "I might show a rose."
"A new rose?" asked Carey interestedly.

   
"No, a big one," said Miss Price.

   
"Can we see it?" asked Carey.

   
"Well, it's still in bud," said Miss Price unwillingly.

   
"Could we see the bud?"
"Oh dear, Carey," cried Miss Price, suddenly exasperated, "I'm
sure it's your lunch time."
"Not till one o'clock," said Carey reassuringly. "Miss Price."
"Well?"
"If anyone was going in for a flower show, would it be fair for them to
use magic?"
Miss Price flattened out the earth round the plant with a trowel. She banged
it rather hard. "Perfectly fair," she said.

   
Carey was silent. Paul lay on his face, watching an earwig in the grass. He
held one eye open with his finger. He was very sleepy. Miss Price dug another
hole.

   
"What about the people who can't do magic?" asked Carey after a while.

   
"What about the people who can buy special fertilizers?" retorted
Miss Price, jamming the plant in the hole upside down, and then pulling it out
again. "What about the people with hothouses?" She shook the plant
savagely to get the earth off the leaves. "What about the people who can
afford expensive gardeners?" She sat back on- her heels and glared at Carey.
"How am I to compete with Lady Warbuckle, for instance?"
Carey blinked her eyes. "I only wondered," she said timidly.

   
"I worked for my knowledge," said Miss Price grimly, starting on another
hole. Her face was very red.

   
"Miss Price," began Carey again after a while.

   
"Well?"
"Why don't you make a whole lot of golden sovereigns?"
"Of golden sovereigns?"
"Yes, sacks and sacks of them. Then you could buy hothouses and fertilizers
and things."
Miss Price sighed. She pushed her hat back a little from her forehead. "I
have tried to explain to you, Carey, how difficult witchcraft is, but you still
think I just have to wave a wand
for anything to happen. Have you ever heard of a rich witch?"
"No," admitted Carey, "I can't say I have."
"Well, I'll tell you why. Money is the hardest thing of all to make. That's
why most witches live in hovels. Not because they like it. I was fortunate enough,"
she added primly, "to have a little annuity left me by my dear mother."
"Aren't there any spells for making money?"
"Dozens. But you can't get the ingredients. What people don't realize,"
went on Miss Price, "is that there are very few spells that can be done
without paraphernalia. You must, if you understand, have something to turn into
something and something to turn it twith."
"Yes," said Carey, "I see." And it was indeed as clear as
daylight to her.

   
"And there are very few spells I know by heart," admitted Miss Price.
"I have to have time to look them up. And quiet. I can't be fussed."
She took up her trowel again. "If I'm fussed, everything goes straight
out of my head. Now you must wake up those boys. There's the church clock striking
three-quarters."
Carey got up unwillingly. "I wish," she said, "you'd come with
us on the next adventure."
"Well," said Miss Price, "it depends on where you go. If I came,
I'd like it a good deal better arranged than last night was, for instance."
"We'd let you choose," offered Carey.

   
"Well," said Miss Price brightly. "We could all plan it together,
couldn't we?" She seemed flustered and pleased at the same time. "But
not tonight. Beauty sleep tonight. . . ."
The South Sea island idea came to Carey in the hayloft. She had awakened first
and lay sleepily staring at the patch of blue sky through the open door, breathing
the sweet smell of the dried apples left over from last year.

   
"What a pity," she thought, as she stared at the sky, "that we
have to go everywhere at night. There are heaps of places I'd like to see, but
in daylight." Then slowly she remembered that daylight was not the same
all over the world, that the earth was slowly turning, that if you could travel
fast enough -in a magic bed, for instance-you might catch up with the sun. The
idea gradually took shape and became such an unbearably exciting possibility
that she had to wake Charles.

   
They discussed it at long length, all that evening between tea and bedtime,
and the very next morning they tackled Miss Price. Apart from liking her, Carey
thought she might perhaps feel safer if Miss Price came along too; a little
extra magic couldn't come amiss, and the police-station episode had had its
frightening moments.

   
Miss Price was a little alarmed at first at the distance.

   
"Oh, I can't go gadding about the Pacific at my age, Carey. I like what
I'm used to. You'd better go by yourselves."
"Oh, do come, Miss Price," Carey begged her. "You needn't gad
about. You can just sit in the sun and rest your ankle. It would do you good."
"Oh, it would be wonderful, Miss Price. Just think- bananas, breadfruit,
pineapples, mangoes! You could come on the broomstick."
"The broomstick can only do about five miles at a stretch," objected
Miss Price, but her eyes lit up at the thought of a breadfruit cutting in a
pot.

   
"Then you can come with us on the bed. There's heaps of room. Do, do, Miss
Price!"
Miss Price wavered. "It would be a change," she admitted.

   
"Couldn't we go tonight?"
"Tonight!" Miss Price looked startled.

   
"Well, why not? We slept last night."
Miss Price succumbed. "Well," she said hesitatingly, "if you
slept last night . . ."
Paul was a little mystified by the South-Sea-island idea, but when Carey and
Charles had explained to him the wonders of a coral reef, he, too, became agreeable
but insisted on being allowed to take his bucket and spade.

   
Miss Price got out an atlas and an encyclopedia, and they searched for islands
whose dawn would correspond with sunset in England, where European night became
Pacific day. They did sums and calculations on the backs of envelopes, and at
last they decided on an island called Ueepe. It was not marked on the map, but
it was mentioned in the encyclopedia as an island yet to be explored by white
men. It had been sighted among others mentioned from the sailing ship Lucia
Cavorta in 1809 and was spoken of by this name by natives on the island of Panu,
four hundred and fifty miles distant, and was said to be uninhabited.

   
"We'll have the whole place to ourselves," exclaimed Carey delightedly.
"We could even rename it."
As it would hardly be possible for Miss Price to sneak into Aunt Beatrice's
house so late in the evening and make her way up to Paul's bedroom, it was decided
that Miss Price was to come to the window on her broomstick when it began to
grow dark and that the children would let her in.

   
Charles mended Paul's spade for him, and they also found a butterfly net, "which
might do for shrimping or anything."
The children undressed and had their baths just as usual, because it was one
of those nights when Elizabeth wanted to talk about her sister's little boy's
operation. She followed them about from bathroom to bedroom, telling them the
well-known details. They knew that later, when she served Aunt Beatrice's dinner,
she would sigh and say that she was "worn out getting those children to
bed."
But she went at last, stumping down the stairs, and Carey and Charles slipped
from their room into Paul's. Paul was asleep, so they sat on his bed and talked
in whispers until it began to grow dark. Then they went to the window and watched
for Miss Price. Charles was the first to spy her, flying low in the shadows
of the cedars. The broomstick had a slightly overloaded look and swayed against
the window sill as a dinghy bumps against a ship's side. It was difficult getting
Miss Price in at the window. She was carrying a string bag, a book, and an umbrella,
and she dared not let go of the broomstick until her legs were safely over the
sill. She knocked her hat off on the lower part of the sash, and Carey, picking
it up, found that it was a sun helmet. "My father's," explained Miss
Price, in a loud whisper, panting after her exertions, "the one he had
in Poona in '99. It has mosquito netting round the brim."
Carey peered at it dimly in the fading light, as it swung upon her finger. It
smelled strongly of naphtha. "I don't think there are any mosquitoes in
the South Seas," she whispered back.

   
"Well," replied Miss Price briskly, tying the string bag to the foot
of the bed with Paul's dressing-gown cord. "Prevention is better than cure.
Better slip the umbrella under the mattress, Charles. And my book, too, please."
It was so dark now that they could hardly see each other's faces. There was
no moon, and the cedar boughs were but dim shadows against a gray sky.

   
Carey wondered suddenly whether they ought to have dressed again. She hadn't
thought of it, somehow. Now, it seemed too late. The dark room was full of bustle.
Paul was waking as Charles heaved at the mattress to stow away the book and
umbrella.