cheek.
“Well, yes, Oberon
“I know it already,” said Donald. “One of these days I’ll do you a one-man show. Well, no, not quite a one-man show. I must be allowed a partner, for what says the play? ‘Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill; The man shall have his mare again, and all shall be well.’ ”
“One of these days Bradley will boot that fellow into the harbour,” said Marcus Lynn to Brian Yorke.
“Not until the play is over, I trust,” said Brian. “Bourton can’t swim.”
Chapter 3
Mouths of Babes
“I’ll speak in a monstrous little voice.”
« ^ »
We can only stay a week,” said Rosamund importantly.
“Dear, dear! How sad for Mrs Gavin and me,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Yes, I think it is, but, you see, we are going to be in a real grown-up play, and we’ll be wanted for rehearsals. All Signora Moretti’s dancing class are in it, but the rest of them only dance and sing.
“Very impressive. Congratulations,” said Laura Gavin.
“I am an elf,” said Edmund.
“Great! What do you have to say?” asked Laura.
“And I and I and I. Where shall we go, go, go?”
“You only say it once,” said his sister.
“I say it all. I am going to have paint all over my face, so nobody knows it’s me,” Edmund confided to Dame Beatrice.
“He thinks so,” said Rosamund. “I am a fairy. There are three elves and a fairy. I am called Peasblossom.”
“A delightful name,” said Dame Beatrice.
“Yes. I ought to be in white, like garden peas, but Signora Moretti said I shall have a pink tunic and pink shoes and a lovely pink hat. Signora said I shall. The other elves—not Edmund—are called Ganymede and Lucien. They are black. Well, they are not really black, they are more brown, and they laugh all the time. Their father and mother are doctors and they are lethal.”
“I hope not,” said Laura. “You mean they are legal—legal immigrants.”
“Ganymede is called Moth and Lucien is Mustardseed. He will be all in yellow with pom-poms on his hat. I would rather be in pink than yellow.”
“Pink is for embarrassment, yellow for cowardice,” said Laura. “What about the other two?”
“Lucien is to be all different colours and have wings. He is to be like a butterfly. I think that’s silly, because moths aren’t like butterflies, are they?—well, not really.”
“As you say. What about Edmund?”
“I shall have a crown,” said Edmund.
“No, you won’t. You are called Cobweb.” Rosamund turned to Dame Beatrice. “He thinks he will have a crown, but he will have a silver tunic with sparkles on it like dewdrops and a kind of angel thing on his head with tinsel all over it in crisscross.”
“A halo in the form of a cobweb,” suggested Laura.
“What’s a halo?”
“A nimbus. A kind of angel thing, as you said.”
“Edmund had one on his head at Christmas when he was an angel in the cavity play.”
“Nativity play.”
“Nativity play. He had a halo and he was an angel.”
“So he is an old hand so far as the stage is concerned,” said Dame Beatrice admiringly.
“He was naughty. He picked up the Baby Jesus and threw it at one of the shepherds.”
“It was only a doll,” said Edmund. “I wanted it to be a real Baby Jesus and it wasn’t. It was only a doll.”
“You were right to discard it. Never accept inferior substitutes for the real thing,” said Dame Beatrice.
“I like pigs better than sheep,” said Rosamund. “Uncle Carey has got millions and millions of pigs. The sow hadn’t got enough teats for all the little pigs, so Aunt Jenny had to feed the littlest one out of a bottle. It was called Runt, but I called it Grunt. It waxed and grew fat, Uncle Carey said, and now it follows Aunt Jenny all over the house and won’t have anything to do with the other pigs. Aunt Jenny says it thinks it’s one of us.”
