“I know you did,” said Lucy.
“I came back to fetch you,” said Philip, “and now we’d better get along home.”
“You’ve got to do seven deeds of power before you can get home,” said Lucy.
“Oh! I remember, Perrin told me,” said he.
“Well,” Lucy went on, “that’ll take ages. No one can go out of this place twice unless he’s a King-Deliverer. You’ve gone out once—without me. Before you can go again you’ve got to do seven noble deeds.”
“I killed the dragon,” said Philip, modestly proud.
“That’s only one,” she said; “there are six more.” And she ate bread and milk with firmness.
“Do you like this adventure?” he asked abruptly.
“It’s more interesting than anything that ever happened to me,” she said. “If you were nice I should like it awfully. But as it is—”
“I’m sorry you don’t think I’m nice,” said he.
“Well, what do you think?” she said.
Philip reflected. He did not want not to be nice. None of us do. Though you might not think it to see how some of us behave. True politeness, he remembered having been told, consists in showing an interest in other people’s affairs.
“Tell me,” he said, very much wishing to be polite and nice. “Tell me what happened after I—after I—after you didn’t come down the ladder with me.”
“Alone and deserted,” Lucy answered promptly, “my sworn friend having hooked it and left me, I fell down, and both my hands were full of gravel, and the fierce soldiery surrounded me.”
“I thought you were coming just behind me,” said Philip, frowning.
“Well, I wasn’t.”
“And then.”
“Well, then—You were silly not to stay. They surrounded me—the soldiers, I mean—and the captain said, ‘Tell me the truth. Are you a Destroyer or a Deliverer?’ So, of course, I said I wasn’t a destroyer, whatever I was; and then they took me to the palace and said I could be a Princess till the Deliverer King turned up. They said,” she giggled gaily, “that my hair was the hair of a Deliverer and not of a Destroyer, and I’ve been most awfully happy ever since. Have you?”
“No,” said Philip, remembering the miserable feeling of having been a coward and a sneak that had come upon him when he found that he had saved his own skin and left Lucy alone in an unknown and dangerous world; “not exactly happy, I shouldn’t call it.”
“It’s beautiful being a Princess,” said Lucy. “I wonder what your next noble deed will be. I wonder whether I could help you with it?” She looked wistfully at him.
“If I’m going to do noble deeds I’ll do them. I don’t want any help, thank you, especially from girls,” he answered.
“I wish you did,” said Lucy, and finished her bread and milk.
Philip’s bowl also was empty. He stretched arms and legs and neck.
“It is rum,” he said; “before this began I never thought a thing like this could begin, did you?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “everything’s very wonderful. I’ve always been expecting things to be more wonderful than they ever have been. You get sort of hints and nudges, you know. Fairy tales—yes, and dreams, you can’t help feeling they must mean something. And your sister and my daddy; the two of them being such friends when they were little, and then parted and then getting friends again;—that’s like a story in a dream, isn’t it? And your building the city and me helping. And my daddy being such a dear darling and your sister being such a darling dear. It did make me think beautiful things were sort of likely. Didn’t it you?”
“No,” said Philip; “I mean yes,” he said, and he was in that moment nearer to liking Lucy than he had ever been before; “everything’s very wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Ahem!” said a respectful cough behind them.
They turned to meet the calm gaze of Double-six.
“If you’ve quite finished breakfast, Sir Philip,” he said, “Mr. Noah would be pleased to see you in his office.”
“Me too?” said Lucy, before Philip could say, “Only me, I suppose?”
“You may come too, if you wish it, your Highness,” said Double-six, bowing stiffly.
They found Mr. Noah very busy in a little room littered with papers; he was sitting at a table writing.
“Good morning, Princess,” he said, “good morning, Sir Philip. You see me very busy. I am trying to arrange for your next labour.”
“Do you mean my next deed of valour?” Philip asked.
“We have decided that all your deeds need not be deeds of valour,” said Mr. Noah, fiddling with a pen. “The strange labours of Hercules, you remember, were some of them dangerous and some merely difficult. I have decided that difficult things shall count. There are several things that really need doing,” he went on half to himself. “There’s the fruit supply, and the Dwellers by the sea, and—But that must wait. We try to give you as much variety as possible. Yesterday’s was an outdoor adventure. Today’s shall be an indoor amusement. I say today’s but I confess that I think it not unlikely that the task I am now about to set the candidate for the post of King-Deliverer, the task, I say, which I am now about to set you, may, quite possibly, occupy some days, if not weeks of your valuable time.”
“But our people at home,” said Philip. “It isn’t that I’m afraid, really and truly it isn’t, but they’ll go out of their minds, not knowing what’s become of us. Oh, Mr. Noah! do let us go back.”
“It’s all right,” said Mr. Noah. “However long you stay here time won’t move with them. I thought I’d explained that to you.”
“But you said—”
“I said you’d set our clocks to the time of your world when you deserted your little friend. But when you had come back for her, and rescued her from the dragon, the clocks went their own time again. There’s only just that time missing that happened between your coming here
