‘You see,’ said Caroline, ‘we are rather young for rescues.’
‘Yes, but,’ Charles urged, ‘we couldn’t do anything except rescue. We can’t do anything else now, however young we are.’
They talked about it for an hour, and said the same things over and over, and then Mr. Penfold came in to say good-bye.
‘I’m translating that book. I’m getting on with it,’ he said; ‘it’s most interesting. I’ve got some of the manuscript in my pocket.’
‘Oh do let us look!’ they all said at once.
‘Well, just one page then, only one, or I shall be late for the choir practice.’
He laid down a type-written page and they all sprawled over the table to read it.
‘To obtain your suit,’ it said. ‘Herbs favourable to the granting of petitions....’ There was a blank for the names of the herbs, which Mr. Penfold hadn’t yet had time, he told them, to translate.
‘Suitors to kings and those in high places shall note well these herbs,’ the translation went on, ‘and offer the flowers and leaves in bunches or garlands when they go to tender their suit. More efficacious it is, however, if the herbs be bruised and their juices expressed, and a decoction given to drink in a little warm sack or strong waters or any liquor convenient. But for this ye need interest with the household of the king or him who has the granting of the desire. These herbs have the virtue to incline the heart favourably towards suitors if gathered in the first quarter of Luna by the hand of the petitioner in his proper person.’
That was the end of the page. The children had to own that they couldn’t understand it.