"Oh, Miss Price," she muttered nervously.
"If I thought-" went on Miss Price, leaning her face closer as Carey backed away-"if, for a minute, I thought-" "You needn't think," cried Carey agitatedly. "We wouldn't ever tell. Ever. Because we promised and we like ou. But," she added bravely, "fair's fair." Miss Price stared at Carey a moment or two longer; then, limply, she sat down again in her chair. Her hands lay open on her lap. Tired, she seemed suddenly, and sad. "Professionally speaking," she said, "I'm no good. I should have put a rattling good spell on all three of you and shut you up once and for all." She sighed. "Now it's too late." Nervously Carey took Miss Price's limp hand in hers. "You needn't worry about us," she said reassuringly, "you really needn't." "And you were wonderful," exclaimed Charles warmly, "professionally speaking." "Do you really think so?" asked Miss Price uncertainly.
"Yes, Miss Price, we do," affirmed Carey. "Don't be discouraged. You'll pick it all up again, easy as pie, once you set your mind to it." ' "You think I will?" asked Miss Price wanly. "You're not just saying that?" "I know it," said Carey, nodding her head.
Miss Price patted her hair as if she felt it had come out of place. "I hope you're right," she said, in her usual voice. "And in the meantime, as you have had some experience, and providing you went somewhere really educational and took every precaution and were very, very careful, I don't see"- she looked at them gravely, almost speculatively, and she drew in her breath- "how one little trip into the past could hurt anyone." THE "PAST" In London, during the reign of King Charles II, there lived a necromancer. (****** These six stars are to give you time to ask what is a necromancer. Now you know, we will go on.) He lived in a little house in Cripplegate in a largish room at the top of a narrow flight of stairs. He was a very nervous man and disliked the light of day. There were two good reasons for this; I will tell you the first.
When he was a boy, he had been apprenticed to another necromancer, an old man from whom he had inherited the business. The old necromancer, in private life, was fat and jolly, but in the presence of his clients he became solemn as an owl and clothed his fat whiteness in a long dark robe edged with fur so that he could fill them with respect and awe. Without his smile, and in his long dark robe, he looked as important as a mayor and as gloomy as a lawyer's clerk.
The young necromancer, whose name was Emelius Jones, worked very hard to learn his trade. It was he who had to turn out at ten to twelve on cold moonlight nights to collect cats from graveyards and walk the lonely beaches in the gray dawn seeking seven white stones of equal size wet by the last wave of the neap tide. It was he who had to mash up erbs with pestle and mortar and crawl down drains after rats.
The old necromancer would sit by the fire, with his feet on a footstool, drinking hot sack with a dash of cinnamon, and nod his head saying: "Well done, my boy, well done. . . ." The young necromancer would work for hours by candlelight, studying the chart of the heavens and learning to read the stars. He would twist the globe on the ebony stand until his brain too rotated on its own axis. On sweltering afternoons he would be sent out to the country on foot to trudge through the fading heather, seeking blindworms and adders and striped snails. He had to climb belfries after bats, rob churches for tallow, and blow down glass tubes at green slime till the blood sang in his ears and his eyes bulged.
When the old necromancer was dying, he sent for his assistant and said: "My boy, there is something I should tell you." Emelius folded his stained hands in his lap and dropped his tired eyes respectfully. "Yes, sir," he murmured.
The old necromancer moved his head so that it fitted more comfortably into the pillow.
"It's about magic," he said.
"Yes, sir," replied Emelius soberly.
The old necromancer smiled slyly at the carved ceiling. "There isn't such a thing." Emelius raised a pair of startled eyes. "You mean-" he began.
"I mean," said the old necromancer calmly, "what I say!" When Emelius had got over the first sense of shock (he never completely recovered), the old necromancer went on: "All the same, it's a good paying business. I've kept a wife and five daughters out at Deptford (whence I shall be carried tomorrow), with a carriage and four, fifteen servants, French music teacher, and a bark on the river. Three daughters have married well. I have two sons-in-law at court and a third in Lombard Street."'He sighed. "Your poor father, may he rest in peace, paid me handsomely for your apprenticeship; if I have been hard on you, it is from a sense of duty toward one who is no more. My affairs are in good order, my family well provided for, so the business as it stands and these premises I leave to you." He folded his hands on his chest and became silent.
"But," stammered Emelius, "I know nothing. The love philters-" "Colored water," said the old necromancer in a tired voice.
"And foretelling the future?" "Child's play," murmured the old necromancer, "if you don't go into details; whatever you prophesy about the future comes true sooner or later, and what doesn't come true, they forget. Look solemn, don't clean out the room more than once a year, brush up your Latin, oil the globe so that it spins smoothly-and may good luck attend you." That is the first reason why Emelius was a nervous type of man. The second was because in the reign of good King Charles it was still the fashion to send witches, sorcerers, and all those who were reputed to work magic, to the gallows, and Emelius, if he made a slip or an enemy, might at any moment be delivered by an unsatisfied client to a very tight and uncomfortable end.
He would have got out of the business if he dared, but all the money of his patrimony had been dispensed in learning magic, and he was not a strong enough character to start afresh.
In the year 1666 Emelius, at thirty-five, had become old before his time, old and thin and terribly nervous. He would jump if a mouse squeaked, turn pale at a moonbeam, tremble at his servant's knock.
If he heard a footstep on the stairs, he would immediately begin a little spell, something he knew by heart, so that his clients might be impressed as they entered by his practice of magic. He had also to be ready to sit down at the clavichord, in case it was a king's man come to spy upon him, and pretend he was a dreamy musician who had inherited the necromancer's lodging.
One evening, hearing footsteps in the narrow hall below the stairs, he leapt up from the chair where he had been dozing by the fire (these late August nights held the first chill of autumn), trod on the cat (which let out an unearthly squeal), and seized a couple of dried frogs and a bunch of henbane. He lit a wick, which floated in a bowl of oil, sprinkled it with yellow powder so it burned with a blue flame, and hurriedly, with trembling hands, rushed off a little spell-with one eye on the clavichord and the other on the door, and all his body poised for instant flight.
There was a knock, a hesitatingly fumbled knock.
"Who's there?" he called, preparing to blow out the blue flame.
There was a whisper and some shuffling; then a voice, clear and treble as a silver bell, said: "Three children who are lost." Emelius was taken aback. He made a movement toward the clavichord, then he came back to the blue flame. Finally, he stood between the two, with one hand carelessly poised upon the globe, in the other a sheet of music. "Enter," he said somberly.