“I thought it meant crawling,” Cat said humbly.
Janet looked at him consideringly. “I suppose you’re quite small still,” she said, “but you do worry me when you go all cowed. Has anyone done anything to you?”
“I don’t think so,” Cat said, rather surprised. “Why?”
“Well, I never had a brother,” said Janet. “Fetch a mirror.”
Cat got the hand-mirror from his chest of drawers and laid it carefully in the middle of the floor. “Like that?”
Janet sighed. “That’s what I mean. I knew you’d get it if I ordered you to. Do you mind not being so kind and obedient? It makes me nervous. Anyway –” She took up the book. “Can you see your face in it?”
“Almost nothing else,” said Cat.
“Funny. I can see my face,” said Janet. “Can I do it, too?”
“You’re more likely to get it to work than I am,” said Cat. So they both circled the mirror, and they said the words in chorus. The door opened. Mary came in. Janet guiltily put the book behind her back.
“Yes, here he is,” Mary said. She stood aside to let a strange young man come into the room. “This is Will Suggins,” she said. “He’s Euphemia’s young man. He wants to talk to you, Eric.”
Will Suggins was tall and burly and rather handsome. His clothes looked as if he had brushed them carefully after working in a bakery all day. He was not friendly. “It was you turned Euphemia into a frog, was it?” he said to Cat.
“Yes,” said Cat. He dared say nothing else with Mary there.
“You’re rather small,” said Will Suggins. He seemed disappointed about it. “Anyway,” he said, “whatever size you are, I’m not having Euphemia turned into things. I take exception to it. Understand?”
“I’m very sorry,” said Cat. “I won’t do it again.”
“Too right you won’t!” said Will Suggins. “You got off too light over this, by what Mary tells me. I’m going to teach you a lesson you won’t forget in a hurry.”
“No you’re not!” said Janet. She marched up to Will Suggins and pushed Magic for Beginners threateningly towards him. “You’re three times his size, and he’s said he’s sorry. If you touch Cat, I shall—” She took the book out of Will Suggins’s chest in order to leaf hastily through it. “I shall induce complete immobility in the legs and trunk.”
“And very pretty I shall look, I’m sure!” Will Suggins said, much amused. “How are you going to do that without witchcraft, may I ask? And if you did, I daresay I could get out of it fast enough. I’m a fair warlock myself. Though,” he said, turning to Mary, “you might have warned me he was this small.”
“Not so small where witchcraft and mischief are concerned,” said Mary. “Neither of them are. They’re a pair of real bad lots.”
“Well, I’ll do it by witchcraft then. I’m easy,” said Will Suggins. He searched in the pockets of his slightly floury jacket. “Ah!” he said, and fetched out what seemed to be a lump of dough. For a moment he shaped it vigorously in both powerful hands. Then he rolled it into a ball and threw it at Cat’s feet. It landed on the carpet with a soft plop. Cat looked at it in great apprehension, wondering what it was supposed to do.
“That’ll lie there,” said Will Suggins, “until three o’clock Sunday. Sunday’s a bad time to be at witchcraft, but it’s my free day. I shall be waiting for you then in Bedlam field, in the form of a tiger. I make a good tiger. You can turn yourself into something as large as you like, or small and fast if you prefer, and I’ll teach you that lesson whatever you are. But if you don’t come to Bedlam field in the form of something, that lump of dough will start to work and you’ll be a frog yourself – for as long as I feel like keeping you that way. Right, Mary. I’m through now.”
Will Suggins turned and marched out of the room. Mary followed him, but she was unable to resist putting her head back round the door to say, “And see how you like that, Eric!” before she shut it.
Cat and Janet looked at one another and then at the lump of dough. “What am I going to do?” said Cat.
Janet threw her book on to Cat’s bed and tried to pick up the lump of dough. But it had grown to the carpet. She could not shift it. “You’d only get this up by cutting a hole in the floor,” she said. “Cat, this gets worse and worse. If you’ll forgive my saying so, I’ve stopped loving your sugar-coated sister even one tiny bit!”
“It was my fault,” said Cat. “I shouldn’t have lied about Euphemia. That’s what got me in this mess, not Gwendolen.”
“Mess is not a strong enough word,” said Janet. “On Sunday, you get mauled by a tiger. On Monday, it comes out that you can’t do magic. And if the whole story doesn’t come out then, it will on Wednesday, when Mr Bedlam calls for his money. Do you think Fate has something up its sleeve for Tuesday too? I suppose if you go to meet him on Sunday in the form of yourself, he can’t hurt you much, can he? It’s better than waiting to be turned into a frog.”
“I’d better do that,” Cat agreed, looking at the ominous lump of dough. “I wish I really could turn into things, though. I’d go as a flea. He’d scratch himself to bits trying to find me.”
Janet laughed. “Let’s see if there’s a spell for it.” She turned round to fetch Magic for Beginners and hit her head on the mirror. It was hanging in the air, level with her forehead. “Cat! One of us did it! Look!”
Cat looked, without much interest. He had too much on his mind. “I expect it was you. You’re the same as Gwendolen, so you’re bound to be able to work spells. But changing into things won’t be in either of these books. That’s Advanced Magic.”
“Then I’ll do the spell to get the mirror down,” said Janet. “Not that I want to be a witch. The more I see of witchcraft, the more it seems just an easy way to be nasty.”
She had opened the book, when there was a knock at the door. Janet seized the chair beside Cat’s bed and stood on it, so as to hide the mirror. Cat hastily dropped to one knee on top of the lump of dough. Neither of them wanted any more trouble.
Janet doubled Magic for Beginners inside out so that it could have been any book, and waved it at Cat. “Come into the garden, Maud,” she proclaimed.
Taking this as an invitation, Miss Bessemer opened the door and came in. She was carrying an armful of things, with a chipped teapot hanging off one finger. “The furnishings I promised you, loves,” she said.
“Oh,” said Janet. “Oh, thanks very much. We were just having a poetry reading, you know.”
“And I made sure you were talking to me!” Miss Bessemer said, laughing. “My name’s Maud. Will these be all right on the bed?”
“Yes, thanks,” said Cat.
Neither of them dared move. They twisted round to watch Miss Bessemer dump the armful on the bed, and, still twisted, they thanked her profusely. As soon as Miss Bessemer had gone,
