Barbara looked at her doubtfully. Jill’s idea was not like anything she had ever read in a fairy tale, and she did not think much of it.
‘You see, you’re not a new kind of princess,’ she answered simply. And the Doctor looked amused; but Jill hurried away to the other end of the room and began talking about temperatures.
The giant must have been very busy all that day, for he did not come near the invalid’s room till just before supper. Kit came, and so did the other boys, but they only said vaguely that Peter was in the barn; and when he ran in at last to say good-night to her, she knew it was no use trying to find out what his plans were for locking up the princess. For Peter did not know that he was a giant, and he did not know that Jill was a princess; and it was better to go on with the story in her own way than to provoke Peter’s great laugh by telling him about it. So she went to sleep and dreamed of the dear old magician, who had been away from her kingdom for four whole months, and was going to be away for two months more; and in her dream he came back and rescued the princess himself, and turned the beast into a prince for her. But that was only a dream, and in the morning the end of the story seemed further off than ever.
‘Do let me see what you have been writing, Peter,’ she shouted through her open window, just before lunch-time. Peter and Wilfred had been more than an hour composing a letter on the lawn below, with Robin jumping round them all the time, jogging their elbows and otherwise provoking them into outbreaks of fury that did not improve his behaviour in the least.
‘Do, there’s a dear, nice, darling boy,’ begged Barbara, as the conspirators looked at one another and hesitated.
‘It’s a secret,’ said Wilfred.
‘I can keep a secret; you know I can,’ cried Babs, indignantly.
‘It’s about Jill,’ explained Peter, ‘and you might do her a great and lasting injury if you were to go and blab. Mightn’t she, Will?’
‘I think it’s a shame,’ protested Babs. ‘Here am I shut up all alone, with a bad leg that hurts and hurts and––’
‘Oh, let her see it. Anything for a quiet life,’ interrupted Wilfred, and Peter strode upstairs with the letter.