The conspirators glanced hastily at one another. ‘It’s your turn, Kit,’ said Wilfred.
Kit started uncomfortably. ‘I don’t think so,’ he objected. ‘I’m not in the mood, and I should make a mess of it. You go, Peter.’
‘All right, I’m on,’ said Peter, and he strode briskly towards the front of the house, swinging his long arms as he went.
Robin danced round the other two gleefully. ‘Silly old Doctor won’t marry Jill, won’t marry Jill, all on a summer’s morning!’ he chanted in a kind of refrain he made up on the spur of the moment.
Kit turned upon him sternly. ‘Chuck it, Bobbin, unless you want your head cuffed!’ he commanded, and walked off before he could be provoked into carrying out his threat.
Upstairs Barbara lay on the sofa by the window and waited for the Doctor’s visit. Her leg was in plaster of Paris now, and she could be lifted on to the sofa by Egbert, every morning. It was less wearisome than lying in bed all day, but even the fun of pretending she was enchanted by an evil fairy did not make up for the dulness of staying in one room all through her first holidays. To be sure, she was going to Crofts the day after to-morrow, and Auntie Anna had promised that Jean and Angela should come and see her the very next Saturday; but that did not make up for everything, and she hoped that if her bad fairy ever bewitched her again, she would manage to do it in term-time instead of when the boys came home.
The Doctor drove up just below as she came to this conclusion, and she forgot her own enchantment in the more thrilling amusement of thinking about his.
It was rather stupid of the Doctor, she reflected, to be such a long time working out the rest of his spell. Any one who had gone round the world seven times, as easily and as cheerfully as he had, might at least take the trouble to find a princess to rescue. He must really want to go on being a beast, she decided, as she craned her neck over the window-sill and watched him dismount from his gig. The princes in the fairy tales never wanted to go on being beasts; and it was very confusing. Just then, Jill came out on the doorstep, and she patted the horse and began to talk to the Doctor. Barbara laughed softly to herself. If only the cruel giant would come along now and clap Jill into a dungeon, the Doctor could rescue her on the spot and then stand before her in his real shape. A prince and princess, who had no giant to bring them together, did not make the right sort of fairy tale at all.
‘Hullo! There is the giant!’ exclaimed Babs, immediately afterwards, as Peter came striding across the lawn to interrupt the conversation on the doorstep. ‘He must be the giant,’ she continued, watching the trio below her with great interest, ‘because the Doctor is looking so angry and Jill has such a funny, frightened look on her face. Besides, Peter looks like a giant; he’s so big and dangerous looking. I wonder if the Doctor will kill the giant now, or–oh, dear! they’ve both come indoors and left the giant outside. I don’t think I ever heard of the prince and princess running away from the giant before. I’m sure that’s wrong. How Peter is grinning–just like a horrid old giant. Coo-ey, Peter!’
The prince and princess came into the room, talking busily.