this boy, but Waif’s yapping was making it difficult to think. “Do shut up, Waif. What’s your name, boy?”
“Peter Regis,” he said. “My mother’s the Witch of Montalbino. She’s a great friend of William Norland’s and she arranged with him for me to come here. Do be quiet, little dog. I’m meant to be here.” He heaved himself out of the wet knapsack and dumped it on the floor. Waif stopped barking in order to venture out from under the chair and sniff at the knapsack in case it might be dangerous. Peter took the chair and hung his wet jacket on it. His shirt underneath was almost as wet. “And who are you?” he asked, peering at Charmain among the bubbles.
“Charmain Baker,” she told him and explained, “We always call the wizard Great Uncle William, but he’s Aunt Sempronia’s relation really. I live in High Norland. Where have you come from? Why did you come to the back door?”
“I came down from Montalbino,” Peter said. “And I got lost, if you must know, trying to take the short cut from the pass. I did come here once before, when my mother was arranging for me to be Wizard Norland’s apprentice, but I don’t seem to have remembered the way properly. How long have you been here?”
“Only since this morning,” Charmain said, rather surprised to realise she had not been here a whole day yet. It had felt like weeks.
“Oh.” Peter looked at the teapots through the floating bubbles, as if he were calculating how many cups of tea Charmain had drunk. “It looks as if you’d been here for weeks.”
“It was like this when I came,” Charmain said coldly.
“What? Bubbles and all?” Peter said.
Charmain thought, I don’t think I like this boy. “No,” she said. “That was me. I forgot I’d thrown my soap into the grate.”
“Ah,” Peter said. “I thought it looked like a spell that’s gone wrong. That’s why I assumed you were an apprentice too. We’ll just have to wait for the soap to be used up, then. Have you any food? I’m starving.”
Charmain’s eyes went grudgingly to her bag on the table. She turned them away quickly. “No,” she said. “Not really.”
“What are you going to feed your dog on, then?” Peter said.
Charmain looked at Waif, who had gone under the chair again in order to bark at Peter’s knapsack. “Nothing. He’s just had half a pork pie,” she said. “And he’s not my dog. He’s a stray that Great Uncle William took in. He’s called Waif.”
Waif was still yapping. Peter said, “Do be quiet, Waif,” and reached among the storming bubbles and past his wet jacket to where Waif crouched under the chair. Somehow he dragged Waif out and stood up with Waif upside down in his arms. Waif uttered a squeak of protest, waved all four paws, and curled his frayed tail up between his back legs. Peter uncurled the tail.
“You’ve damaged his dignity,” Charmain said. “Put him down.”
“He isn’t a he,” Peter said. “He’s a she. And she hasn’t got any dignity, have you, Waif?”
Waif clearly disagreed and managed to scramble out of Peter’s arms on to the table. Another teapot fell down and Charmain’s bag tipped over. To Charmain’s great dismay, the pork pie and the apple tart rolled out of it.
“Oh, good!” said Peter, and snatched up the pork pie just before Waif got to it. “Is this all the food you’ve got?” he said, biting deeply into the pie.
“Yes,” Charmain said. “That was breakfast.” She picked the fallen teapot up. The tea that had spilled out of it rapidly turned into brown bubbles, which whirled upwards to make a brown streak among the other bubbles. “Now look what you’ve done.”
“A bit more won’t make any difference to this mess,” Peter said. “Don’t you ever tidy up? This is a really good pie. What’s this other one?”
Charmain looked at Waif, who was sitting soulfully beside the apple tart. “Apple,” she said. “And if you eat it, you have to give some to Waif too.”
“Is that a rule?” Peter said, swallowing the last of the pork pie.
“Yes,” said Charmain. “Waif made it and he – I mean she – is very firm about it.”
“She’s magical then?” Peter suggested, picking up the apple tart. Waif at once made small soulful noises and trotted about among the teapots.
“I don’t know,” Charmain began. Then she thought of the way Waif seemed to be able to go anywhere in the house and how the front door had burst open for her earlier on. “Yes,” she said. “I’m sure she is. Very magical.”
Slowly and grudgingly, Peter broke a lump off the apple tart. Waif’s frayed tail wagged and Waif’s eyes soulfully followed his every movement. She seemed to know exactly what Peter was doing, no matter how many bubbles got in the way. “I see what you mean,” Peter said, and he passed the lump to Waif. Waif gently took it in her jaws, jumped from the table to the chair and then to the floor, and went pattering away to eat it somewhere behind the laundry bags. “How about a hot drink?” Peter said.
A hot drink was something Charmain had been yearning for ever since she fell off the mountainside.
She shivered and hugged her sweater round herself. “What a good idea,” she said. “Do make one if you can find out how.”
Peter waved bubbles aside to look at the teapots on the table. “Someone must have made all these pots of tea,” he said.
“Great Uncle William must have made them,” Charmain said. “It wasn’t me.”
“But it shows it can be done,” Peter said. “Stop standing there looking feeble and find a saucepan or something.”
“You find one,” Charmain said.
Peter shot her a scornful look and strode across the room, waving bubbles aside as he went, until he reached the crowded sink. There he naturally made the discoveries that Charmain had made earlier. “There are no taps!” he said incredulously. “And all these saucepans are dirty. Where does he get water from?”
“There’s a pump out in the yard,” Charmain said unkindly.
Peter looked among the bubbles at the window, where rain was still streaming across the panes. “Isn’t there a bathroom?” he said. And before Charmain could explain how you got to it, he waved and stumbled his way across the kitchen to the other door and arrived in the living room. Bubbles stormed in there around him as he dived angrily back into the kitchen. “Is this a joke?” he said incredulously. “He can’t have only these two rooms!”
Charmain sighed, huddled her sweater further around herself, and went to show him. “You open the door again and turn left,” she explained, and then had to grab Peter as he turned right. “No. That way goes to somewhere very strange. This is left. Can’t you tell?”
“No,” Peter said. “I never can. I usually have to tie a piece of string round my thumb.”
Charmain rolled her eyes towards the ceiling and pushed him left.
