Later, leaving Emelius with a history book in the shade of the mulberry tree, reading with much interest of what was to come to pass in his future, Charles and Carey sought out Miss Price in her bedroom.
"Miss Price," whispered Carey, as if Emelius might hear, "do you like him?" Miss Price, who was making up the bed, paused, sheet in hand. "He has distinction," she admitted guardedly.
"Think, Miss Price," went on Carey, "of the things you'd have to talk about. You haven't even begun-" Miss Price wrinkled her forehead. "Ye-s," she said uncertainly.
"Couldn't he stay a bit longer? Couldn't he stay a week?" Miss Price turned. She sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed. "I had better be perfectly frank," she announced firmly. "He could only stay on one condition." "What condition?" they asked excitedly.
The tip of Miss Price's nose became rather pink.
"He must be persuaded to have a good hot bath," she said. "And he must have a haircut." "Oh, I'm sure he'd do it. Willingly," said Carey.
"And his clothes must go to the cleaners." "But what will he wear meantime?" Miss Price looked thoughtful. "There's that old Norfolk suit of my father's, and . . . yes, I've some things in a trunk . . ." Carey and Miss Price were not present when Charles tackled Emelius under the mulberry tree, but in the still summer air the sound of their voices floated in through the open window. Charles's voice was a burbling monotone, but Emelius's was raised. Charles's suggestions were meeting with opposition. The conversation went on and on. There were a few deep silences. Carey shut her eyes and crossed her thumbs; the going, she realized, was not easy. At last, through the mist of leaves, she saw Emelius stand up. As the two figures began to approach the house, Carey drew back into the room, but not before she heard Emelius's parting shot, delivered in a voice that broke. "So be it," he said, "if it is the custom, but I had an uncle died of the ague through this same cause." Preparing Emelius's bath was something of a ceremony. Miss Price dug out her fluffiest and softest bath towel and a clean cotton kimono with an embroidered spray of flowers across the back. Carey ran the water to a pleasant, even temperature and threw in a handful of Miss Price's carefully hoarded bath salts. She spread out the bath mat and closed the window. Emelius was ushered in, the plumbing was explained to him by Charles, and he was asked to put his clothes outside the door.
He was a long time in the bath. The children tiptoed around the house in a state of nervous anxiety, as if a major operation was taking place upstairs. After a while, they heard him running the hot and cold taps and raising his voice, against the sound of the water, in a little Shake-sperian ditty, slightly off key.
"He's enjoying it," said Charles.
Emelius bathed, his soft mouse-colored hair falling carelessly across his brow, looked almost ten years younger. And there was an old-fashioned distinction about the Norfolk suit. It fitted him quite well; Miss Price's father, Carey realized, must have been as thin and angular as Miss Price. The buckled shoes, perhaps, were not quite right, but the over-all effect was pleasing; he looked rather romantic, or -as Charles put it-"like some kind of poet from Oxford." Miss Price examined him with critical eyes and, on the whole, seemed pleased. With comb and nail scissors, she lightly trimmed the hair behind his ears. "That's better," she said, as she brushed him down. Modestly proud, she seemed, as though she had.invented him. "Now let me see your nails. . . ." Emelius submitted humbly to being turned about-to having his tie knotted and his collar straightened; this was his homage to a master-craftswoman-one who would always know best.
They arranged to make tea a picnic meal and to take Emelius across the fields to Pepperinge Eye. It was with no small excitement that they started out on this expedition. Miss Price herself looked strangely moved as Emelius with sparkling eyes named each field or wood. There were few changes. Rush Field, Stummets, Cankerho, these had been the same in his day. Blowditch in Emelius's time had been called Bloodyditch, an echo of past battles, but Farr Wood was still Farr Wood, "and still," said Carey, who had walked there often, "as far." Emelius could not find his father's house in Pepperinge Eye. He thought it had stood on the site of the present vicarage. They all insisted upon going into the churchyard to see if, by any chance, Emelius had been buried there. But he wasn't-at least he couldn't find his own grave. He found, however, the grave of his aunt- Sarah Ann Hobday-and to his surprise, after scraping the lichen from the nearly defaced gravestone, he found that she had died on the twenty-seventh of August, 1666, the day-was it yesterday?-on which the children had appeared in his rooms. It was like getting a telegram.
"Oh, dear," said Miss Price, distressed, "I am so sorry. Perhaps we had better go home. ..." "Nay," said Emelius somberly. "Charon waits for all. Better to live well than to live long. I had not seen her since I was a child. . . ." He sighed. "Every light has its shadow." "And it's an ill wind-" began Charles eagerly.
Miss Price turned sharply. "What can you mean, Charles?" "Nothing," said Charles. He looked a little shamefaced and stooped to pick up a stone.
"He's thinking of the house," said Carey. "Couldn't we go and see it?" "Well, really, Carey-" began Miss Price. She seemed a little shocked.
"I mean, as we're so near? What's the good of going home? We'd only sit and mope. It might cheer him up," she added quickly. "I mean, it's his house now. . . ." "Would it yet be there?" asked Emelius.
Miss Price looked thoughtful. "I don't see why it shouldn't be." She turned to Emelius. "Do you know the way?" Yes, he knew the way all right-none better-by Tinker's Lane. But this they found had become a cart track and disappeared into a farm. "Trespassers will be prosecuted" said a notice on the gate, and a large black dog rushed out to bark at them.
"No matter," Emelius told them. Suddenly taking the lead, he led them back to the road, and, skirting the farm buildings, he took them through fields and spinneys to the base of the hill beyond. Miss Price became a little fussed and disheveled-she was not at her best climbing through hedges.