"Could we see the bud?" "Oh dear, Carey," cried Miss Price, suddenly exasperated, "I'm sure it's your lunch time." "Not till one o'clock," said Carey reassuringly. "Miss Price." "Well?" "If anyone was going in for a flower show, would it be fair for them to use magic?" Miss Price flattened out the earth round the plant with a trowel. She banged it rather hard. "Perfectly fair," she said.
Carey was silent. Paul lay on his face, watching an earwig in the grass. He held one eye open with his finger. He was very sleepy. Miss Price dug another hole.
"What about the people who can't do magic?" asked Carey after a while.
"What about the people who can buy special fertilizers?" retorted Miss Price, jamming the plant in the hole upside down, and then pulling it out again. "What about the people with hothouses?" She shook the plant savagely to get the earth off the leaves. "What about the people who can afford expensive gardeners?" She sat back on- her heels and glared at Carey. "How am I to compete with Lady Warbuckle, for instance?" Carey blinked her eyes. "I only wondered," she said timidly.
"I worked for my knowledge," said Miss Price grimly, starting on another hole. Her face was very red.
"Miss Price," began Carey again after a while.
"Well?" "Why don't you make a whole lot of golden sovereigns?" "Of golden sovereigns?" "Yes, sacks and sacks of them. Then you could buy hothouses and fertilizers and things." Miss Price sighed. She pushed her hat back a little from her forehead. "I have tried to explain to you, Carey, how difficult witchcraft is, but you still think I just have to wave a wand for anything to happen. Have you ever heard of a rich witch?" "No," admitted Carey, "I can't say I have." "Well, I'll tell you why. Money is the hardest thing of all to make. That's why most witches live in hovels. Not because they like it. I was fortunate enough," she added primly, "to have a little annuity left me by my dear mother." "Aren't there any spells for making money?" "Dozens. But you can't get the ingredients. What people don't realize," went on Miss Price, "is that there are very few spells that can be done without paraphernalia. You must, if you understand, have something to turn into something and something to turn it twith." "Yes," said Carey, "I see." And it was indeed as clear as daylight to her.
"And there are very few spells I know by heart," admitted Miss Price. "I have to have time to look them up. And quiet. I can't be fussed." She took up her trowel again. "If I'm fussed, everything goes straight out of my head. Now you must wake up those boys. There's the church clock striking three-quarters." Carey got up unwillingly. "I wish," she said, "you'd come with us on the next adventure." "Well," said Miss Price, "it depends on where you go. If I came, I'd like it a good deal better arranged than last night was, for instance." "We'd let you choose," offered Carey.
"Well," said Miss Price brightly. "We could all plan it together, couldn't we?" She seemed flustered and pleased at the same time. "But not tonight. Beauty sleep tonight. . . ." The South Sea island idea came to Carey in the hayloft. She had awakened first and lay sleepily staring at the patch of blue sky through the open door, breathing the sweet smell of the dried apples left over from last year.
"What a pity," she thought, as she stared at the sky, "that we have to go everywhere at night. There are heaps of places I'd like to see, but in daylight." Then slowly she remembered that daylight was not the same all over the world, that the earth was slowly turning, that if you could travel fast enough -in a magic bed, for instance-you might catch up with the sun. The idea gradually took shape and became such an unbearably exciting possibility that she had to wake Charles.
They discussed it at long length, all that evening between tea and bedtime, and the very next morning they tackled Miss Price. Apart from liking her, Carey thought she might perhaps feel safer if Miss Price came along too; a little extra magic couldn't come amiss, and the police-station episode had had its frightening moments.
Miss Price was a little alarmed at first at the distance.
"Oh, I can't go gadding about the Pacific at my age, Carey. I like what I'm used to. You'd better go by yourselves." "Oh, do come, Miss Price," Carey begged her. "You needn't gad about. You can just sit in the sun and rest your ankle. It would do you good." "Oh, it would be wonderful, Miss Price. Just think- bananas, breadfruit, pineapples, mangoes! You could come on the broomstick." "The broomstick can only do about five miles at a stretch," objected Miss Price, but her eyes lit up at the thought of a breadfruit cutting in a pot.
"Then you can come with us on the bed. There's heaps of room. Do, do, Miss Price!" Miss Price wavered. "It would be a change," she admitted.
"Couldn't we go tonight?" "Tonight!" Miss Price looked startled.
"Well, why not? We slept last night." Miss Price succumbed. "Well," she said hesitatingly, "if you slept last night . . ." Paul was a little mystified by the South-Sea-island idea, but when Carey and Charles had explained to him the wonders of a coral reef, he, too, became agreeable but insisted on being allowed to take his bucket and spade.
Miss Price got out an atlas and an encyclopedia, and they searched for islands whose dawn would correspond with sunset in England, where European night became Pacific day. They did sums and calculations on the backs of envelopes, and at last they decided on an island called Ueepe. It was not marked on the map, but it was mentioned in the encyclopedia as an island yet to be explored by white men. It had been sighted among others mentioned from the sailing ship Lucia Cavorta in 1809 and was spoken of by this name by natives on the island of Panu, four hundred and fifty miles distant, and was said to be uninhabited.
"We'll have the whole place to ourselves," exclaimed Carey delightedly. "We could even rename it." As it would hardly be possible for Miss Price to sneak into Aunt Beatrice's house so late in the evening and make her way up to Paul's bedroom, it was decided that Miss Price was to come to the window on her broomstick when it began to grow dark and that the children would let her in.
Charles mended Paul's spade for him, and they also found a butterfly net, "which might do for shrimping or anything." The children undressed and had their baths just as usual, because it was one of those nights when Elizabeth wanted to talk about her sister's little boy's operation. She followed them about from bathroom to bedroom, telling them the well-known details. They knew that later, when she served Aunt Beatrice's dinner, she would sigh and say that she was "worn out getting those children to bed." But she went at last, stumping down the stairs, and Carey and Charles slipped from their room into Paul's. Paul was asleep, so they sat on his bed and talked in whispers until it began to grow dark. Then they went to the window and watched for Miss Price. Charles was the first to spy her, flying low in the shadows of the cedars. The broomstick had a slightly overloaded look and swayed against the window sill as a dinghy bumps against a ship's side. It was difficult getting Miss Price in at the window. She was carrying a string bag, a book, and an umbrella, and she dared not let go of the broomstick until her legs were safely over the sill. She knocked her hat off on the lower part of the sash, and Carey, picking it up, found that it was a sun helmet. "My father's," explained Miss Price, in a loud whisper, panting after her exertions, "the one he had in Poona in '99. It has mosquito netting round the brim." Carey peered at it dimly in the fading light, as it swung upon her finger. It smelled strongly of naphtha. "I don't think there are any mosquitoes in the South Seas," she whispered back.