They turned to meet the calm gaze of Double-six.
'If you've quite finished breakfast, Sir Philip,' he said, 'Mr. Noah would be pleased to see you in his office.'
'Me too?' said Lucy, before Philip could say, 'Only me, I suppose?'
'You may come too, if you wish it, your Highness,' said Double-six, bowing stiffly.
They found Mr. Noah very busy in a little room littered with papers; he was sitting at a table writing.
'Good-morning, Princess,' he said, 'good-morning, Sir Philip. You see me very busy. I am trying to arrange for your next labour.'
'Do you mean my next deed of valour?' Philip asked.
'We have decided that all your deeds need not be deeds of valour,' said Mr. Noah, fiddling with a pen. 'The strange labours of Hercules, you remember, were some of them dangerous and some merely difficult. I have decided that difficult things shall count. There are several things that really need doing,' he went on half to himself. 'There's the fruit supply, and the Dwellers by the sea, and—— But that must wait. We try to give you as much variety as possible. Yesterday's was an out-door adventure. To-day's shall be an indoor amusement. I say to-day's but I confess that I think it not unlikely that the task I am now about to set the candidate for the post of King-Deliverer, the task, I say, which I am now about to set you, may, quite possibly, occupy some days, if not weeks of your valuable time.'
'But our people at home,' said Philip. 'It isn't that I'm afraid, really and truly it isn't, but they'll go out of their minds, not knowing what's become of us. Oh, Mr. Noah! do let us go back.'
'It's all right,' said Mr. Noah. 'However long you stay here time won't move with them. I thought I'd explained that to you.'