He was looking at it as though he did not see it, and yet Charlotte could not help saying, ‘Isn’t she splendid? She knew all about spells and things. It’s her books we do it out of—at least, most of it.’
‘If she knew all about them, she knew what rotten rot they were,’ said Rupert. ‘You never try to do anything with your spells except the things that would happen just the same without your spelling.’
‘What’s that about my spelling?’ asked Caroline, who had made a bold dash for what she remembered of the way the word looked in the medicine book, and written, in a violent violet smudge, ‘Aſſerphrodite.’
‘I say your magic isn’t real.’
‘We saw you when you were invisible,’ Caroline began, laying down her pen, whose wet nib at once tried to dry, turning from purple to golden green bronze. And then:
‘Yes, I know,’ said Rupert; ‘but if it’s really real, why don’t you do something with it that can’t really happen in puris naturalatibus?—that means just naturally. Why don’t you bring back Mrs. Wilmington’s cat that’s lost? Or find my Kohinore pencil. Then there’s a thing in that book Mr. Penfold’s got. He told me about it. You make a wax image of your enemy and stick pins into it, and every time you stick in a pin your enemy feels a pain in the part you stick the pins into.’
‘How awfully wicked!’ said Caroline in an awe-struck voice.
‘Or you can roast the wax man in front of a fire, and as the wax melts, the man wastes away,’ said Rupert hardly.
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Charlotte.
‘Yes, do,’ said Charles; ‘what else?’