‘There are lots of biscuits in the sideboard in the dining-room,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ll stay with the wounded—or else you can stay and I’ll go with whichever doesn’t.’
Though it was the middle of the night no one even thought of being sleepy. Perhaps it was the excitement of this most real adventure, or perhaps the seeds of the fern have an awakening effect. At any rate, the three C.’s were as ready to begin a new game as though it had been ten o’clock in the morning of the first day of the holidays, instead of half-past twelve of a night that wasn’t any night in particular except the Eve of St. John.
Charlotte and Charles set off, important and tip-toeing, on a biscuit-hunt, and Caroline, like a good little nurse, fetched a basin and sponge and washed the face of the stranger, taking no notice of his objections that he was not a baby, and earnestly hoping that in her long dressing-gown she looked at least a little like an Arab maiden ministering to a Feringhee warrior.
‘Now I’m going to wash your weary feet, if you will stick them out over the side of the bed,’ she said. ‘They always do in Saracen countries; and if you think it’s like a baby I’ll call it dressing your wounds.’
She brought a chair and a basin of water very carefully, and a big sponge, and then she peeled off Rupert’s stockings and bathed his tired, swollen feet with great care and gentleness. And if a little of the water did go on the bed—well, you can’t think of everything all in a minute, and she did put a towel under his legs afterwards.
‘That’s jolly,’ said the wounded knight, more graciously.
‘You are terribly wounded,’ said Caroline comfortingly. ‘You must have been fighting dragons or walking over red-hot ploughshares, or perhaps it was a pilgrimage with peas in your shoes. We play pilgrims sometimes, with cockles in our hats and pilgrims’ staffs—only we always pretend the peas. I think it’s quite fair to pretend the shoes, don’t you?’
When the others came back from their hunting, with a good ‘bag’ (it was a tin, really) of biscuits, the Saracen maiden greeted them with—
‘Hist! The stranger sleeps. Let’s pretend he’s fainted, and we’ll rouse him with a skin of wine. Get some water in the tooth-mug. And where are the biscuits?’