“In spots,” said the Faun Man.
When Peter broke the news to the golden woman she covered her face and laughed through her hands. She had a trick of treating Cherry and Peter like children, although she looked no more than twenty herself. She put her arms round their shoulders, drawing their faces close together, on either side of hers. She was so happy and beautiful it would have been difficult not to love her. “My Loo-ard!” she said, “I’d do a skirt-dance to-night if it wasn’t for the water under the punt. I’m all against getting wet, aren’t you, Cherry?”
Peter looked knowing. “The first thing she’d do if she knew she was going to drown, would be to take off her shoes and stockings.”
The golden woman pinched the girl’s cheek. “Hulloa! Secrets already!—But I don’t like Lorie’s idea for disguising us. Let’s see what we can do with five minutes’ shopping.”
When they rowed up to The Skylark they were met by a mysterious silence. Lifting out their parcels, they tiptoed into the cabin. Harry was bending over a table-cloth, with a tooth-brush in his hand and a bottle of blacking at his elbow. The Faun Man was melting the bottoms of candles and making them stick to the bottoms of empty jam-jars.
“What are you doing?”
They both looked up.
“I’m getting the illuminations ready,” said the Faun Man.
“And I’m making our flag,” said Harry, scrubbing hard at the table-cloth. “Blacking’s awful stuff; it’s so smudgy.” They crowded round him to inspect his handiwork and read: