Chris therefore threw himself into all the preliminaries of his task. His head swam when he laid it on his pillow at night, and Becky Boozer would stand with her hands on her barrel-sized hips, shaking her hat until its plumes and roses waved madly, over "her boy's" shadowed eyes and weary air.
For Chris was now as accepted a member of the household as Mr. Wicker himself, and had it not been for the robust guffaws of Ned Cilley, and the ministrations of the now devoted Becky, Chris's days would have been tedious indeed.
One afternoon when he returned, after a rest, to Mr. Wicker's study, he saw that there was something new in the room. A bowl with a goldfish in it stood on the table, but Mr. Wicker was not to be seen. Now, however, Chris was not the boy he had been a few weeks before. He went straight to the bowl and addressed the fish.
"Sir," he said to the goldfish, "I am here. What shall I do first?"
The goldfish might almost have been said to have changed its expression and smiled, before, brushing a drop of water from his sleeve, Mr. Wicker stood beside the table smiling.
"How you have improved, my boy!" he exclaimed. "It is now time for you to try, and this is as good a change as any."
All at once, at the imminent prospect of really changing himself into some other form, Chris became frightened and his hands grew cold.
"Oh, sir! Do you really think I know how?" he cried, gazing up into the face of his master. "Suppose I change and can't change back?"
Mr. Wicker shook his head with a smile.
"Never fear, Christopher. You know enough to start, and I feel reasonably sure that you will be quite able to change back again. If you get stuck I can help you. Come now," he said, putting out his hand to touch Chris's shoulder in a reassuring way, "here you go. Remember Incantation Seventy-three, Book One."