CHAPTER V
'STRATAGEMS'
I really don't quite know what made me listen to Peterkin's fancies about his invisible princess, as I got into the habit of calling her. It was partly, I suppose, because it amused me—we had nothing much to take us up just then: there was no skating that winter, and the weather was dull and muggy—and partly that somehow he managed to make me feel as if there might really be something in it. I suppose when anybody quite believes in a thing, it's rather catching; and Peterkin's head was so stuffed and crammed with fairy stories that at that time, I think, they were almost more real to him than common things.
He went about, dreaming of ogres and magicians, and all the rest, so much, that I scarcely think anything marvellous would have surprised him. If I had suddenly shot up to the ceiling, and called out that I had learnt how to fly, I don't believe he would have been startled; or if I had shown him a purse with a piece of gold in it, and told him that it was enchanted, and that he'd always find the money in it however often he spent it, he'd have taken it quite seriously, and been very pleased.
So the idea of an enchanted little girl did not strike us as at all out of the way.
We did not talk about her any more that night after we had been at Mrs. Wylie's, for we had to hurry up to get neat again to come down to the drawing-room to mamma. Blanche and Elf were already there when we came in, and they, and mamma too, were full of questions about how we'd enjoyed ourselves, and about the parrot, and what we'd had for tea—just as I knew they would be; I don't mean that mamma asked what we'd had for tea, but the girls did.
And then Pete and Elf went off to bed, and when I went up he was quite fast asleep, and if he hadn't been, I could not have spoken to him because of my promise, you know.
He made up for it the next morning, however.
I suppose he had had an extra good night, for I felt him looking at me long before I was at all inclined to open my eyes, or to snort for him to know I was awake. And when at last I did—it's really no good trying to go to sleep again when you feel there's somebody fidgeting to talk to you—there he was, his eyes as bright and shiny as could be, sitting bolt up with his hands round his knees, as if he'd never been asleep in his life?