‘No pins, I don’t mean,’ said Charles, ‘but just make one. We could decide what to stick into it after we’d made it.’
‘Caro and I wouldn’t agree to sticking anything into it,’ said Charlotte; ‘and, anyhow, you haven’t got any wax.’
‘Yes, I have,’ said Charles triumphantly; ‘so there! I’ve been saving it up ever since he said that.’
‘Where from?’ asked the girls together.
‘The sticking-out bits of candles,’ said Charles, ‘and one or two ends out of candlesticks in the morning when they are put on the boot-shelf in the scullery to be cleaned. It’s a good big lump now. Shall I get it?’
‘It would be fun to model something,’ Caroline admitted, and Charles, falling flat on his front, felt behind the big books on the bottom shelf and produced a large ball of a grey semi-transparent nature.
‘Here it is,’ he said. ‘Now I’ll tell you what I’ve thought. Only don’t tell Rupert. We’ll do it first and tell Rupert afterwards. And then he’ll have to believe.’
‘Well, what is it?’
‘We’ll make,’ said Charles slowly and seriously, ‘a wax image of the Murdstone man, and we’ll make him hollow, his legs and arms needn’t be, nor his head, but just his chest. And make his heart separate, and put it in. And take out his heart and melt it every day. That would soften his heart, and he would say he was sorry and Rupert would forgive him.’
‘“When hollow hearts shall wear a mask,”’ said Charlotte.