Mary Norton - Bed-Knob and Broomstick

One evening Carey overheard a most curious conversation. It began by Miss Price saying brightly: "Have you ever tried intrasubstantiary-locomotion? " There was a mystified silence on the part of Emelius. Then he said, rather uncertainly: "No. At least, not often." (He had never confessed to Miss Price that, after a lifetime's study of magic, he had never yet got a spell to work.) "It's awfully jolly," she went on. "I had a positive craze for it once." The damsons pattered gently into the basket, and Carey wondered if Emelius was as curious as she was.

Miss Price gave a little laugh. She sounded almost girlish. "Of course^ as spells go, it's child's play. But sometimes the easiest things are the most effective, don't you think?" Emelius cleared his throat. "I'm not sure that I haven't got it a little muddled in my mind," he ventured guardedly. "I may be confusing it with-" Miss Price laughed quite gaily. "Oh, you couldn't confuse intrasubstantiary-locomotion with anything else." She seemed amused.

"No," admitted Emelius. "No. I suppose you couldn't." "Unless," said Miss Price, suddenly thoughtful, leaning forward on the rake and gazing earnestly into the middle distance, "you mean-" "Yes," put in Emelius hastily, "that's what I do mean." "What?" asked Miss Price wonderingly.

"That's what I was confusing it with." "With what?" "With-" Emelius hesitated. "With what you were going to say." "But intrasubstantiary-locomotion is quite different." Miss Price sounded surprised and rather puzzled.

"Oh, yes," admitted Emelius hastily, "it's completely different, but all the same-" "You see intrasubstantiary-locomotion is making a pair of shoes walk without any feet in them." "Ah, yes," agreed Emelius with relief. "Shoes. That's it." "Or a suit of clothes get up and sit down." "Yes," said Emelius, but he sounded a little less sure of himself.

"Of course," went on Miss Price enthusiastically,. "the very best results are got from washing on a line." She laughed delightedly. "It's amazing what you can do with washing on a line." "Astounding," agreed Emelius. He gave a nervous little laugh.

"Except sheets," Miss Price pointed out.

"Oh, sheets are no good." "It has to be wearing apparel. Something you can make look as if a person was inside it." "Naturally," said Emelius rather coldly.

At first Miss Price, anxious not to have him on her hands for too long, had taken great trouble to explain the circumstances that governed the length of Emelius's visit, but, latterly, as he began to settle down and find happiness in the discovery of friends, she, too, seemed sad at the thought of his departure. And contented as he was, he himself was a little worried about the Fire of London and what might have happened to his rooms in Cripplegate, and, also, he felt in duty bound (having read of his aunt's death in the churchyard) to attend to the business of inheriting her estate. "I can always come back and visit you," he would explain, "if you could come and fetch me." But Miss Price didn't approve of this idea. "One thing or another," she would say, "not this dashing about between centuries. A settled life is good for everyone. I think the wise thing to do would be to give up your London establishment and settle down in your aunt's house at Pepperinge Eye. And we could walk up there sometimes, and it would be nice to think of your living there. You would not seem so far away." Emelius thought this over. "It's a good piece of land," he said at last, but he spoke rather sadly.

Carey, who was present, said warmly, as if to comfort him: "We'd go there often. We'd sit on the stones in the parlor, near where the fireplace was, and we'd feel awfully near you-" Emelius looked at her. "I'd like you to see the house," he said. "As it is in my day." Carey turned to Miss Price.

"Couldn't we go just once?" she asked.

Miss Price tightened her lips. "It's always 'just once,' Carey. You've had your 'just once,' and we've still to take Mr. Jones back." "If we promise not to stay a minute, just a second, when we take him back, couldn't we just go once and see him at his aunt's house?" Emelius glanced at Miss Price's face, then sadly down at the lawn.

"It isn't," said Miss Price uncomfortably, "that I wouldn't be happy to go and see Mr. Jones, especially in that dear little house, but-" "But what?" asked Carey.

"I'm responsible for you children. There seems to be no way of knowing what may happen on these outings-" "Well," said Carey reasonably, "it's hardly much of an outing-just to go and visit Mr. Jones-in his quiet little house at Pepperinge Eye-not two miles away." "I know, Carey," Miss Price pointed' out. "But what about that quiet day we planned on the beach?" "Well, after all, that was a cannibal island. This is quite different. Mr. Jones's -aunt's dear little house. At Pepperinge Eye-" "If you came just once," said Emelius. "Say, a week after I left, just to see it all. Then after that you could just come in spirit-" "In spirit?" said Miss Price dubiously.

"I mean just take a walk up to where the house was and we'll think of each other," said Emelius.

Miss Price sat silent. They could not read her expression. At last she said, rather surprisingly: "I don't like flying in the face of nature-" "Well," Carey pointed out, "isn't the broomstick-?" "No," said Miss Price, "that's different, that's accepted- witches have always flown on broomsticks." She paused. "No, I don't quite know how to put it, and I don't really like to mention it, but there's no getting away from the fact that, as far as we're concerned, Mr. Jones is long since dead and buried." Emelius stared glumly at the grass between his feet. He could not deny it.

"I don't hold it against him," went on Miss Price. "We must all come to it sooner or later, but it doesn't seem wise or natural to foster these attachments with one who is no more." They sat silent; then, after a bit, Emelius sighed. "There is no record of my death in the churchyard," he pointed out.

Miss Price pursed up her lips. "That proves nothing. We did not look in the annex behind the yew hedge." "Don't let's," said Carey suddenly.

A CHANGE OF MIND But Miss Price stuck to the original plan. When Emelius's clothes arrived from the cleaners, they took him back. They dropped him in Goat Alley at night and did not stay a minute. Miss Price never liked long-drawn-out good-bys, and in her efforts to spare everybody's feelings she was almost too businesslike. She would not "step upstairs" to try his cherry cordial. She bundled the children back onto the bed with almost indecent haste, and left Emelius standing, somber and dark-robed, in the moonlit street. Embarrassed she seemed, and worried by the whole business, and she was sharp with the children when they got home, and next day flung herself into bottling as though she tried to drown the memory of that sad white face deep in sliced apricot and squashed tomato pulp. She did not join the children on their expeditions, and the bed-knob had been hidden away.

The happy atmosphere of the little house seemed to have dispersed, and the children wandered into the fields and sat on gates, talking and kicking their heels. They chewed long stalks of grass and quarreled idly, while the end of the holidays loomed in sight and lowered over them.

No one even mentioned Emelius until one day at tea when Miss Price, quite suddenly, brought the subject up herself.

"I wonder," she said, gazing pensively at the brown teapot, "if we should have taken Mr. Jones right home." The atmosphere at once became electric. Carey laid down her teaspoon. All three pairs of eyes were fixed on Miss Price's face.

"But we did," said Charles after a moment.

"I mean," went on Miss Price, "leaving him in the street like that. It was rather rude." "Yes," said Carey. "His house might have been damaged in the fire, or anything. He might have had nowhere to sleep that night." Miss Price looked worried. "It was just that we agreed- didn't we?-not to stay." "Yes," said Carey. "You remember we asked you whether if we promised not to stay a minute, a second, when we took him back, you would let us go later and visit him properly." "I didn't promise anything," replied Miss Price hastily. She poured herself out another cup of tea. As she stirred it, she said uncertainly: "But I think he's all right, don't you? He could always go down to Pepperinge Eye." "Yes," said Carey, "I'm sure he'd manage." "And yet," went on Miss Price, "in some ways Mr. Jones is rather helpless. That fire, you know, they say there were riots afterwards." Miss Price, without noticing what she was doing, put another spoonful of sugar in her tea.