‘Yes,’ said Charles, ‘I’ll remember.’
‘Well, look here. I’ll go and try it on with William if you like,’ said Charlotte; ‘but he likes Caroline best because of what she did on the Rupert hunt day.’
‘You do rub it in, don’t you?’ said Rupert. ‘I wish sometimes you hadn’t helped me that day.’
There was a silence. Then Charlotte said, ‘You go, Caro. And Charles, whatever happens, you must wash your hands. Go on, like a sensible, and do it now, so as not to waste time.’
‘Cui bono?’ said Rupert. ‘It’ll be all the same in a hundred years, or even in five minutes, if it’s Charles’s hands.’
But Charles went, when Charlotte assured him that if he didn’t they would go without him. The moment the door closed behind him she turned to Rupert.
‘Now, look here,’ she said; ‘I know what’s the matter with you. You’ve got the black dog on your back. I don’t know what dog it is or why. But you have. You haven’t been a bit nice to-day; you didn’t play up when you were Rupert of the Rhine—not a bit, you didn’t—and you think we’re silly kids. And you think you’re letting yourself down by playing with us. You didn’t think that the first day when we saved you. Something’s got into you. Oh, I do believe you’re bewitched. Rupert, do you think you’re bewitched? Because if you are we know how to unbewitch you.’
‘You’re a very silly little girl,’ was all Rupert found to say.
‘Not a bit of it,’ said Charlotte brightly. ‘You only say that because you haven’t got any sisters of your own, so of course you don’t know. We’ve been as nice to you as ever we could be, and you’re getting nastier and nastier. If you like to be nice, be nice. If you don’t, I shall know it’s not your fault but because you’re bewitched, and I shall pity but not despise you. So now you know.’
Rupert was twisting and untwisting the fringed tassel of a sofa-cushion and looking at the floor.