‘Oh, good,’ said Mariella, not interested.
‘When?’ snapped Julian. ‘Fix it.’
‘I don’t know,’ she said, with a quick glance at him. ‘We must ask Grannie. I’ll ask Grannie, Judith, and let you know to-morrow.’
‘Because we’re coming back to-morrow,’ broke in Charlie. ‘Julian, we must, mustn’t we? Will you be here, Judith?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘That’s good, because I shall need you. I need thee every hour. I shall have forgotten my breast-stroke by to-morrow. I do believe if we hadn’t found you, Judith, we should never have stepped on to the ice at all. We should just have looked at it and faded gracefully back to London. We are so very silly.’
He sat down to take off his boots, and began whistling—then burst out singing:
‘There were three sillies
Who stood like lilies——’
A pause—
‘Refusing to spin——’