‘Oh, nothing else. It’s better if you get a bit of the enemy’s hair, and put that on your wax man’s head. Mr. Penfold read me bits out of a piece of poetry about it.’
‘Didn’t he say it was wicked?’ Caroline asked.
‘Yes,’ said Rupert reluctantly; ‘but I know what’s wicked without Mr. Penfold telling me, or you either. Just fancy how your enemy would squirm when he felt the pin-pricks; they’d be like sword-thrusts, you know, to him.’
‘Don’t!’ said Caroline; ‘don’t, Rupert, it’s horrid. Please don’t. I don’t want to know about those sort of spells.’
‘Rupert wouldn’t do it, of course,’ said Charles. ‘He’s only talking.’
‘How do you know I wouldn’t?’ said Rupert savagely. ‘Next time you have a pain in your leg, Caroline, you’ll think it’s growing pains, but really it’ll be me, sticking a long hat-pin into the wax image I’ve secretly made of you.’
Caroline got up.
‘Come, Char,’ she said, ‘we’ll go and sit in the drawing-room if Rupert’s going on like this.’
‘He doesn’t mean it,’ said Charles again.