‘Have you?’ repeated Kit, turning to the Doctor.
‘Ask Jill,’ replied the Doctor, smiling more than ever.
‘Boys,’ said Christopher, fixing his spectacles firmly on his nose and staring solemnly at his brothers, ‘we’ve made shocking idiots of ourselves.’
Into the middle of them all now walked Mrs. Crofton of Crofts.
‘Such a trouble as I’ve had to get back in time, my dear,’ she was beginning, when she too stopped short and seemed to find things a little unusual.
‘Hey-day!’ she cried, leaning on her blue-knobbed cane and looking sharply round. ‘What’s every one looking so glum about, I should like to know?’
Nobody answered her at first. Dr. Hurst put Robin down and rose to his feet, and he stopped smiling at last, while Jill dropped the bread-knife and turned round with a very red face; but neither of them spoke. It was the Babe who came to the rescue, and it was she who explained everything in her small, dreamy voice.
‘Dr. Hurst has saved Jill from the giant,’ she said, ‘and they are going away to their own kingdom, to live happily ever after! I do wish,’ she added wistfully, ‘that the magician would come back too. Then things would be quite beautiful.’