Lucy was a very good little girl indeed, and Harry was not so bad--for a
boy, though the grown-ups called him a limb! They both got on very well
at school, and were not wholly unloved at home. Perhaps Lucy was a bit
of a muff, and Harry was certainly very rude to call her one, but she
need not have replied by calling him a 'beast.' I think she did it
partly to show him that she was not quite so much of a muff as he
thought, and partly because she was naturally annoyed at being buried up
to her waist in the ground among the gooseberry-bushes. She got into the
hole Harry had dug because he said it might make her grow, and then he
suddenly shovelled down a heap of earth and stamped it down so that she
could not move. She began to cry, then he said 'muff' and she said
'beast,' and he went away and left her 'planted there,' as the French
people say. And she cried more than ever, and tried to dig herself out,
and couldn't, and although she was naturally such a gentle child, she
would have stamped with rage, only she couldn't get her feet out to do
it. Then she screamed, and her Uncle Richard came and dug her out, and
said it was a shame, and gave her twopence to spend as she liked. So she
got nurse to clean the gooseberry ground off her, and when she was
cleaned she went out to spend the twopence. She was allowed to go alone,
because the shops were only a little way off on the same side of the
road, so there was no danger from crossings.
'I'll spend every penny of it on myself,' said Lucy savagely; 'Harry
shan't have a bit, unless I could think of something he wouldn't like,
and then I'd get it and put it in his bread and milk!' She had never
felt quite so spiteful before, but, then, Harry had never before been
quite so aggravating.
She walked slowly along by the shops, wishing she could think of
something that Harry hated; she herself hated worms, but Harry didn't
mind them. Boys are so odd.
Suddenly she saw a shop she had never noticed before. The window was
quite full of flowers--roses, lilies, violets, pinks,
pansies--everything you can think of, growing in a tangled heap, as you
see them in an old garden in July.
She looked for the name over the shop. Instead of being somebody or
other, Florist, it was 'Doloro de Lara, Professor of white and black
Magic,' and in the window was a large card, framed and glazed. It said:
ENCHANTMENTS DONE WHILE YOU WAIT.
EVERY DESCRIPTION OF CHARM
CAREFULLY AND COMPETENTLY WORKED.
STRONG SPELLS FROM FIFTY GUINEAS
TO TUPPENCE.
WE SUIT ALL PURSES.
GIVE US A TRIAL.
BEST AND CHEAPEST HOUSE IN THE TRADE.
COMPETITION DEFIED.
Lucy read this with her thumb in her mouth. It was the tuppence that
attracted her; she had never bought a spell, and even a tuppenny one
would be something new.
'It's some sort of conjuring trick, I suppose,' she thought, 'and I'll
never let Harry see how it's done--never, never, never!'
She went in. The shop was just as flowery, and bowery, and red-rosy, and
white-lilyish inside as out, and the colour and the scent almost took
her breath away. A thin, dark, unpleasing gentleman suddenly popped out
of a bower of flowering nightshade, and said:
'And what can we do for you to-day, miss?'
'I want a spell, if you please,' said Lucy; 'the best you can do for
tuppence.'
'Is that all you've got?' said he.
'Yes,' said Lucy.
'Well, you can't expect much of a spell for that,' said he; 'however,
it's better that I should have the tuppence than that you should; you
see that, of course. Now, what would you like? We can do you a nice
little spell at sixpence that'll make it always jam for tea. And I've
another article at eighteenpence that'll make the grown-ups always think
you're good even if you're not; and at half a crown----'
'I've only got tuppence.'
'Well,' he said crossly, 'there's only one spell at that price, and
that's really a tuppenny-half-penny one; but we'll say tuppence. I can
make you like somebody else, and somebody else like you.'
'Thank you,' said Lucy; 'I like most people, and everybody likes me.'
'I don't mean _that_,' he said. 'Isn't there someone you'd like to hurt
if you were as strong as they are, and they were as weak as you?'
[Illustration: '"And what can we do for you to-day, Miss?"'--Page
170.]
'Yes,' said Lucy in a guilty whisper.
'Then hand over your tuppence,' said the dark gentleman, 'and it's a
bargain.'
He snatched the coppers warm from her hand.
'Now,' he said, 'to-morrow morning you'll be as strong as Harry, and
he'll be little and weak like you. Then you can hurt him as much as you
like, and he won't be able to hurt back.'
'Oh!' said Lucy; 'but I'm not sure I want----I think I'd like to change
the spell, please.'
'No goods exchanged,' he said crossly; 'you've got what you asked for.'
'Thank you,' said Lucy doubtfully, 'but how am I----?'
'It's entirely self-adjusting,' said nasty Mr. Doloro. 'No previous
experience required.'
'Thank you very much,' said Lucy. 'Good----'
She was going to say 'good-morning,' but it turned into 'good gracious,'
because she was so very much astonished. For, without a moment's
warning, the flower-shop had turned into the sweet-shop that she knew so
well, and nasty Mr. Doloro had turned into the sweet-woman, who was
asking what she wanted, to which, of course, as she had spent her
twopence, the answer was 'Nothing.' She was already sorry that she had
spent it, and in such a way, and she was sorrier still when she got
home, and Harry owned handsomely that _he_ was sorry he had planted her
out, but he really hadn't thought she was such a little idiot, and he
_was_ sorry--so there! This touched Lucy's heart, and she felt more than
ever that she had not laid out her tuppence to the best advantage. She
tried to warn Harry of what was to happen in the morning, but he only
said, 'Don't yarn; Billson Minor's coming for cricket. You can field if
you like.' Lucy didn't like, but it seemed the only thing she could do
to show that she accepted in a proper spirit her brother's apology about
the planting out. So she fielded gloomily and ineffectively.
Next morning Harry got up in good time, folded up his nightshirt, and
made his room so tidy that the housemaid nearly had a surprise-fit when
she went in. He crept downstairs like a mouse, and learned his lessons
before breakfast. Lucy, on the other hand, got up so late that it was
only by dressing hastily that she had time to prepare a thoroughly good
booby-trap before she slid down the banisters just as the breakfast-bell
rang. She was first in the room, so she was able to put a little salt in
all the tea-cups before anyone else came in. Fresh tea was made, and
Harry was blamed. Lucy said, 'I did it,' but no one believed her. They
said she was a noble, unselfish sister to try and shield her naughty
brother, and Harry burst into floods of tears when she kicked him under
the table; she hated herself for doing this, but somehow it seemed
impossible to do anything else.
Harry cried nearly all the way to school, while Lucy insisted on sliding
along all the gutters and dragging Harry after her. She bought a
catapult at the toy-shop and a pennyworth of tintacks at the oil-shop,
both on credit, and as Lucy had never asked for credit before, she got
it.
At the top of Blackheath Village they separated--Harry went back to his
school, which is at the other side of the station, and Lucy went on to
the High School.
The Blackheath High School has a large and beautiful hall, with a
staircase leading down into it like a staircase in a picture, and at the
other end of the hall is a big statue of a beautiful lady. The High
School mistresses call her Venus, but I don't really believe that is her
name.
Lucy--good, gentle, little Lucy, beloved by her form mistress and
respected by all the school--sat on those steps--I don't know why no
one caught her--and used her catapult to throw ink pellets (you know
what they are, of course) with her catapult at the beautiful white
statue-lady, till the Venus--if that is her name, which I doubt--was all
over black spots, like a Dalmation or carriage dog.
Then she went into her class room and arranged tintacks, with the
business end up, on all the desks and seats, an act fraught with gloomy
returns to Blossoma Rand and Wilhelmina Marguerite Asterisk. Another
booby-trap--a dictionary, a pot of water, three pieces of chalk, and a
handful of torn paper--was hastily sketched above the door. Three other
little girls looked on in open-mouthed appreciation. I do not wish to
shock you, so I will not tell you about the complete success of the
booby-trap, nor of the bloodthirsty fight between Lucy and Bertha
Kaurter in a secluded fives-court during rec. Dora Spielman and Gertrude
Rook were agitated seconds. It was Lucy's form mistress, the adored Miss
Harter Larke, who interrupted the fight at the fifth round, and led the
blood-stained culprits into the hall and up the beautiful picture-like
steps to the Headmistress's room.
The Head of the Blackheath High School has all the subtle generalship of
the Head in Mr. Kipling's 'Stalky.' She has also a manner which subdues
parents and children alike to 'what she works in, like the dyer's hand.'
Anyone less clever would have expelled the luckless Lucy--saddled with
her brother's boy-nature--on such evidence as was now brought forward.
Not so the Blackheath Head. She reserved judgment, the most terrible of
all things for a culprit, by the way, who thought it over for an hour
and a half in the mistress's room, and she privately wrote a note to
Lucy's mother, gently hinting that Lucy was not quite herself: might be
sickening for something. Perhaps she had better be kept at home for a
day or two. Lucy went home, and on the way upset a bicycle with a little
girl on it, and came off best in a heated physical argument with a
baker's boy.
Harry, meanwhile, had dried his tears, and gone to school. He knew his
lessons, which was a strange and pleasing thing, and roused in his
master hopes destined to be firmly and thoroughly crushed in the near
future. But when he had emerged triumphantly from morning school he
suddenly found his head being punched by Simpkins Minor, on the ground
that he, Harry, had been showing off. The punching was scientific and
irresistible. Harry, indeed, did not try to resist; in floods of tears
and with uncontrolled emotion he implored Simpkins Minor to let him
alone, and not be a brute. Then Simpkins Minor kicked him, and several
other nice little boy-friends of his joined the glad throng, and it
became quite a kicking party. So that when Harry and Lucy met at the
corner of Wemyss Road his face was almost unrecognisable, while Lucy
looked as happy as a king, and as proud as a peacock.
'What's up?' asked Lucy briskly.
'Every single boy in the school has kicked me,' said Harry in flat
accents. 'I wish I was dead.'
'So do I,' said Lucy cheerily; 'I think I'm going to be expelled. I
should be quite certain, only my booby-trap came down on Bessie Jayne's
head instead of Miss Whatshername's, and Bessie's no sneak, though she
has got a lump like an ostrich's egg on her forehead, and soaked through
as well. But I think I'm certain to be expelled.'
'I wish I was,' said Harry, weeping with heartfelt emotion. 'I don't
know what's the matter with me; I feel all wrong inside. Do you think
you can turn into things just by reading them? Because I feel as if I
was in "Sandford and Merton," or one of the books the kind clergyman
lent us at the seaside.'
'How awfully beastly!' said Lucy. 'Now, I feel as if I didn't care
tuppence whether I was expelled or not. And, I say, Harry, I feel as if
I was much stronger than you. I know I could twist your arm round and
then hit it like you did me the other day, and you couldn't stop me.'
'Of course I couldn't! _I_ can't stop anybody doing anything they want
to do. Anybody who likes can hit me, and I can't hit back.'
He began to cry again. And suddenly Lucy was really sorry. She had done
this, she had degraded her happy brother to a mere milksop, just because
he had happened to plant her out, and leave her planted. Remorse
suddenly gripped her with tooth and claw.
'Look here,' she said, 'it's all my fault! Because you planted me out,
and I wanted to hurt you. But now I don't. I can't make you boy-brave
again; but I'm sorry, and I'll look after you, Harry, old man! Perhaps
you could disguise yourself in frocks and long hair, and come to the
High School. I'd take care nobody bullied you. It isn't nice being
bullied, is it?'
Harry flung his arms round her, a thing he would never have done in the
public street if he had not been girlish inside at the time.
'No, it's hateful,' he said. 'Lucy, I'm sorry I've been such a pig to
you.'
Lucy put her arms round him, and they kissed each other, though it was
broad daylight and they were walking down Lee Park.
The same moment the enchanter Doloro de Lara ran into them on the
pavement. Lucy screamed, and Harry hit out as hard as he could.
'Look out,' said he; 'who are you shoving into?'
'Tut-tut,' said the enchanter, putting his hat straight, 'you've bust up
your spell, my Lucy--child; no spells hold if you go kissing and saying
you're sorry. Just keep that in mind for the future, will you?'
He vanished in the white cloud of a passing steam-motor, and Harry and
Lucy were left looking at each other. And Harry was Harry and Lucy was
Lucy to the very marrow of their little back-bones. They shook hands
with earnest feeling.
Next day Lucy went to the High School and apologised in dust and ashes.
'I don't think I was my right self,' she said to the Headmistress, who
quite agreed with her, 'and I never will again!'
And she never has. Harry, on the other hand, thrashed Simpkins Minor
thoroughly and scientifically on the first opportunity; but he did not
thrash him extravagantly: he tempered pluck with mercy.
For this is the odd thing about the whole story. Ever since the day when
the tuppenny spell did its work Harry has been kinder than before and
Lucy braver. I can't think why, but so it is. He no longer bullies her,
and she is no longer afraid of him, and every time she does something
brave for him, or he does something kind for her, they grow more and
more alike, so that when they are grown up he may as well be called
Lucius and she Harriett, for all the difference there will be between
them.
And all the grown-ups look on and admire, and think that their incessant
jawing has produced this improvement. And no one suspects the truth
except the Headmistress of the High School, who has gone through the
complete course of Social Magic under a better professor than Mr. Doloro
de Lara; that is why she understands everything, and why she did not
expel Lucy, but only admonished her. Harry is cock of his school now,
and Lucy is in the sixth, and a model girl. I wish all Headmistresses
learned Magic at Girton.