‘As a cow. Yes, indeed,’ said Charlotte with approval.
CHAPTER XV
JUSTICE
The great discovery was Charlotte’s. When they got home and found that the Uncle had gone to Tonbridge for the day, every one felt that something must be done, and Rupert began to write out the telegram to his godfather. It was quite a nice telegram, very long, and explaining everything perfectly, but Mrs. Wilmington unexpectedly refused to lend more than ninepence, so it could not be sent. Caroline sat rocking herself to and fro, with her fingers in her ears to shut out Charles’s comments and advice, and tried in vain to think of some way of using a spell to help the Mineral woman.
‘It’s no use, you know,’ Charles said, ‘looking up the spells in the books until we know how we’re going to use it.’ And Caroline had to agree that this was so. So she rocked herself and racked her brains and felt herself growing slowly more and more stupid, as you do when you are trying very hard to think of something that has made up its mind that it is not going to be thought about.
‘You see,’ Charlotte went on, ‘we mustn’t give the wicked cousin anything to eat to make him good, and most likely we couldn’t get at him to make him eat it, even if we were allowed. What a pity we can’t get at the Lord with a foreign education, weak from a child. I daresay we could make him take things. When you’re weak from a child they give you just anything.’
‘That’s true,’ said Rupert. ‘I knew a chap with a flat chest that had cod-liver oil given him—with oranges. But he said even the oranges weren’t worth it.’
‘But we aren’t allowed to give people things to eat,’ Charlotte reminded him.
‘Besides,’ Rupert reminded her, ‘we don’t know the weak Lord’s address.’