"And wigs are very expensive, I believe," said Anthea. "Look here, leave enough in the bottle to wet father's head all over with in case any emergency emerges—and let's make up with paraffin. I expect it's the smell that does the good really—and the smell's exactly the same."
So a small teaspoonful of the Tatcho was put on the edges of the worst darn in the carpet and rubbed carefully into the roots of the hairs of it, and all the parts that there was not enough Tatcho for had paraffin rubbed into them with a piece of flannel. Then the flannel was burned. It made a gay flame, which delighted the Phœnix and the Lamb.
"How often," said mother, opening the door—"how often am I to tell you that you are not to play with paraffin? What have you been doing?"
"We have burnt a paraffiny rag," Anthea answered. It was no use telling mother what they had done to the carpet. She did not know it was a magic carpet, and no one wants to be laughed at for trying to mend an ordinary carpet with lamp-oil.
"Well, don't do it again," said mother. "And now away with melancholy! Father has sent a telegram. Look!" She held it out, and the children holding it by its yielding corners read:—
"Box for kiddies at Garrick. Stalls for us, Haymarket. Meet Charing Cross, 6.30."
"That means," said mother, "that you're going to see 'The Water Babies' all by your happy selves, and father and I will take you and fetch you. Give me the Lamb, dear, and you and Jane put clean lace in your red evening frocks, and I shouldn't wonder if you found they wanted ironing. This paraffin smell is ghastly. Run and get out your frocks."
The frocks did want ironing—wanted it rather badly, as it happened; for, being of tomato-coloured Liberty silk, they had been found very useful for tableaux vivants when a red dress was required for Cardinal Richelieu. They were very nice tableaux, these, and I wish I could tell you about them—but one cannot tell everything in a story. You would have been specially interested in hearing about the tableaux of the Princes in the Tower, when one of the pillows burst and the youthful Princes were so covered with feathers that the picture might very well have been called "Michaelmas Eve; or, Plucking the Geese."
Ironing the dresses and sewing the lace in occupied some time, and no one was dull because there was the theatre to look forward to, and also the possible growth of hairs on the carpet, for which everyone kept looking anxiously. By four o'clock Jane was almost sure that several hairs were beginning to grow.
The Phœnix perched on the fender, and its conversation, as usual, was entertaining and instructive—like school prizes are said to be. But it seemed a little absent-minded and even a little sad.