‘Of course I don’t,’ said Rupert, and suddenly smiled. ‘I don’t know why I said it. Don’t be silly. There’s lots of things you could try, though, and not hurt any one. Why don’t you——?’ He looked vaguely round the room, and his eyes lighted once more on the portrait. ‘Why don’t you make that come to life? If she was a witch, her picture ought to be good for that, anyhow.’
‘I wish we could,’ said all the children together, with deep earnestness.
‘Well, do it then,’ said Rupert. ‘That’s the sort of thing to make me believe, not the duffing things you’ve kept on doing ever since I’ve been here.’
There was a silence. Then, ‘How do you spell “impossible”?’ asked Charles, and then nothing more was heard but the scratching of violet pens.
But from that time, and in between all other thoughts and happenings, Charlotte kept on thinking about that idea. If only the picture could be made to come alive!
And Charles’s fancy played timidly with the idea of the wax man. Not to hurt the person it was like, of course, but just to see if anything happened. Not pins. But just pinching its foot a very very very little, secretly, with the image in your pocket, when the person it was the image of was there, just to see if the person jumped or called out, as you do if you’re suddenly pinched, no matter how gently.
Charlotte’s mind busied itself then and later, in and between other thoughts, with the question of what was the matter with Rupert, and whether something couldn’t be done to help him.
For there was no doubt of it. Rupert wasn’t at all what they had first thought him. Sometimes, it is true, he would be as jolly as you need wish a boy to be. He would start new games and play them in the most amusing and satisfactory way. But always, sooner or later, and generally sooner, the light of life seemed to go out of him, and he would seem suddenly to be not only tired of the game but tired of everything else, and not only tired of everything, but angry with everybody.
‘I’m sure he’s bewitched,’ said Charlotte more than once in those intimate moments when Caroline and she ‘talked things over’ as they brushed their hair. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if somebody’s made a wax image of him, and it’s when they stick the pins in it that he goes all savage all in a minute.’
‘I do think that’s nonsense,’ Caroline always said. ‘I’m sure it wouldn’t be allowed.’