by Anna Dale
When they had said goodbye to Trunk, they had known that he had a wonderful future ahead of him. Susan’s departure was not like that at all.
After five whole minutes of looking, Miss Quint came across the right page and felt her heart plummet.
‘Found it,’ she told Mr Hardbattle.
Susan put her arms around Arthur and hugged him. Then she stood on tiptoes to kiss Miss Quint and bent down to say goodbye to Scallywag. Finally, after straightening her shoulders, she nodded at Mr Hardbattle to show that she was ready to leave.
At the moment of unwishing, Arthur turned away. He missed seeing Susan grow fainter and fainter until she was a mere ghost and eventually disappeared.
Miss Quint started. She had felt a tingling in her fingers and, wiping away her tears, she looked down at the copy of High Jinks that she held in her hand. The book was growing. Its spine was stretching and its pages were multiplying. It carried on getting larger and larger and heavier and heavier until it had doubled in size.
‘Ooh!’ she exclaimed. ‘Well I never! Arthur, look!’
Despondently, Arthur lifted his head.
On the front cover, which had been plain green, the face of a girl was slowly forming. She had a lively smile and long brown hair and was wearing a T-shirt with sequins on it.
Another change was taking place on the cover of the book. Little by little, the title was fading and new words were appearing in its place. Arthur cried out when he realised what it said. The book had renamed itself The Adventures of Susan.
Arthur felt a sudden wave of happiness wash over him. ‘How did that happen?’ he asked Miss Quint.
She was as astounded as Arthur, but between them, it did not take them long to work it out.
‘Remember A Tale of Derring-do?’ Miss Quint said. ‘When we sent the knight back without his sword? It altered the whole story.’
‘Susan changed a lot while she was with us,’ said Arthur, thinking of the strange, clueless girl she had been and the plucky, fun friend she had turned into.
‘Yes!’ said Miss Quint, remembering only too well the dreary child without a name whom she had longed to get rid of. ‘And think of all the thrilling things we’ve done together! When we sent Susan back, the book would hardly have recognised her. It couldn’t make such an interesting girl stand by the swings for all eternity!’
‘It had to give her more exciting things to do,’ said Arthur, smiling at the picture of Susan on the book’s front cover. ‘Good old Suze! I bet she’s having a whale of a time. I can’t wait to read what she gets up to!’
‘May I?’ Mr Hardbattle said, taking the book from Miss Quint’s hands. He had not enjoyed making Miss Quint and Arthur do something which caused them so much grief, and was as pleased about the outcome as they were. ‘How about that!’ he said, and passed the book to Arthur. ‘Something to put on your bookshelf, Arthur, I think.’
Arthur was required to say a double thank you because, at that moment, the paper boy arrived with the evening edition of the Plumford Gazette. On its front page, just below the headline, COURAGEOUS KIDS OUTWIT CROOKS, there was a photograph of Susan, Lady Smythe-Hughes and himself. Mr Hardbattle insisted that Arthur should keep it as a souvenir.
‘There’s this as well,’ said the paper boy, crouching on the floor to pick up an envelope that someone had dropped through the letter box and on to the doormat. It had a gold coat of arms on the front and was addressed to Arthur, Susan and Miss Quint. The envelope was passed to Arthur, and he turned it over, broke the wax seal on the back and opened it up.
‘It’s an invitation!’ he said, glancing at Miss Quint and grinning. ‘Lady Smythe-Hughes has asked us to tea!’
‘When?’ said Miss Quint, clapping a hand to her mouth.
‘This Tuesday coming, at four o’clock.’
Miss Quint gave a squeak of excitement, and rushed to the telephone to make an appointment at the hairdresser’s.
When Tuesday came round, Miss Quint and Arthur were picked up from Hardbattle Books by a chauffeur-driven Mercedes. They sat on the red leather seats, pulling faces at each other and pressing the intercom button to talk to the driver, whose name was Phil. When they neared Thiselton House, the home of Lord and Lady Smythe-Hughes, Miss Quint grew fidgety and insisted that Arthur should tell her if her hair could do with one more brush or if her lipstick needed touching up. She had bought a new hat for the occasion and kept adjusting its angle, until Arthur pleaded with her to leave it alone. Arthur loosened the knot of the tie that his mother had made him wear. He felt as if he were being strangled.
The driveway was so long that Arthur mistook it for a road. It passed through fields, a wood and miles of rhododendrons. Finally, the driveway came to an end, sweeping in a grandiose curve in front of a large, pearl grey mansion with more windows than Arthur could count. They did not have to yank the bell pull to announce that they had arrived. A butler was already waiting for them with a door held open. As they walked down a hall with a marble floor, they saw three or four people (who they learned were only a small fraction of the staff) and were taken to a huge, high-ceilinged drawing room where tea had been laid out on a linen tablecloth. Opposite the drawing room was the library, and Arthur took the opportunity of taking a peek inside.
‘Look! They like books!’ he said. ‘Perhaps Lord and Lady Smythe-Hughes would like to visit Mr Hardbattle’s shop, and buy up some of his!’
‘It might be an idea,’ said Miss Quint, crossing the hall to join him. ‘Mr Hardbattle needs to find money from somewhere. He said that if he had the funds he’d take me on as assistant manager, but we’re no nearer finding a place for the magic, and there are only three days left!’
Lady Smythe-Hughes arrived soon afterwards and they all assembled in the drawing room for tea, which was beautifully displayed on delicate plates with a rose and chrysanthemum design. Lady Smythe-Hughes was extremely pleased to see them, but disappointed to hear that Susan had not been able to come. They exchanged pleasantries at first, but soon progressed to the juicier topic of the kidnap. Lady Smythe-Hughes explained that the gang had swooped on her when she had left the judging booth and popped into the public library to use the lavatory.
Miss Quint almost choked on her smoked salmon sandwich to hear a woman of such good breeding mentioning the toilet.
‘Oh, I nearly forgot!’ said Arthur, reaching into his blazer pocket. ‘I think this might belong to you.’ He brought out the bow-shaped diamond brooch and offered it to Lady Smythe-Hughes, who pounced on it in delight.
‘Arthur! You darling boy!’ she said. ‘I lost this when we were burgled! Wherever did you find it?’
Arthur thought very carefully before he gave her an answer. ‘In the road,’ he said at last. ‘The robbers must have dropped it there.’
‘I’m really so terribly grateful for what you did,’ gushed Lady Smythe-Hughes. ‘If there’s a favour that I could do for you in return, you only have to ask!’
After they had eaten their fill of exquisite sandwiches and cakes, Lady Smythe-Hughes volunteered to show them her fine collection of antique perfume bottles. They walked into the hall and there they met her husband, Lord Smythe-Hughes, who was taking off a pair of muddy green wellingtons.
Lady Smythe-Hughes introduced her husband to Arthur and Miss Quint. He had heard of their role in the rescue of his wife and said that he was honoured to make their acquaintance. Lady Smythe-Hughes explained that they had just had tea, and that she was taking her guests to view her perfume bottle collection.
Seeing the unimpressed look on Arthur’s face and guessing that Arthur felt the same way about perfume bottles as he did, Lord Smythe-Hughes clapped Arthur on the shoulder and made a suggestion: ‘Like to take a walk around my poultry farm, young chap?’
‘I heard someone say you were a paltry millionaire,’ said Arthur, waiting while Lord Smythe-H
ughes put on his boots again.
‘Poultry millionaire!’ corrected Lord Smythe-Hughes, finding Arthur’s error most amusing.
While Miss Quint and Lady Smythe-Hughes disappeared to the East Wing to coo over odd-shaped pieces of glass, Arthur strolled around several acres at the rear of the house, which had been given over to Lord Smythe-Hughes’s poultry business. It was a free-range poultry farm and the birds wandered wherever they pleased, only popping into their huts at night-time or to lay an egg. There were huts and sheds dotted all over the plot, and even a lake the size of a playing field, with an island for ducks and geese.
In one rather overgrown corner, Arthur and Lord Smythe-Hughes passed by a tall, cylindrical tower with battlements at the top. The building was old, with only a handful of windows, and its bricks were overrun with ivy. Chickens were wandering in and out through its open doorway, and Arthur heard clucking coming from inside.
‘That’s the funniest chicken house I’ve ever seen!’ he said, peering through the entrance and seeing nests scattered about with brown, speckled eggs in one or two of them. As Arthur turned to leave, his hand snagged on a cobweb, and he paused and took another, more deliberate look inside.
‘It’s not really supposed to be a chicken house,’ said Lord Smythe-Hughes. He went on to explain that the building was a folly, which was an ornamental building erected on a whim. Lord Smythe-Hughes said that he was loath to pull it down as it was part of the history of the estate, but he had no real use for it.
‘Couldn’t somebody live here?’ asked Arthur.
‘Good heavens, no!’ Lord Smythe-Hughes chuckled. ‘Who’d want to live in a tumbledown tower without gas or water, right in the middle of a chicken compound?’
Arthur said nothing, but grinned to himself.
As they continued with their walk, Lord Smythe-Hughes pointed out dozens of different breeds of chickens and ducks, some of which were rather rare, but Arthur found it difficult to concentrate. He was itching for the tour to be over so that he could go back to the house and relate what he had seen to Miss Quint.
Eventually, they reached the rear of Thiselton House, and Arthur ran up some steps and dashed inside, but before he could locate Miss Quint, he bumped into Lady Smythe-Hughes, who was tending to a magnificent flower arrangement in the hall.
‘Hello, Arthur!’ she said, smiling. ‘Did you enjoy your walk amongst all those feathered creatures? They’re my husband’s pride and joy!’
‘Yes,’ said Arthur, swiftly moving on to the thing that was at the forefront of his mind. ‘Lady Smythe-Hughes, could I ask you something? It’s about that favour . . .’
.
Also by Anna Dale
.
Whispering to Witches
Dawn Undercover
Spellbound
.
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in June 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
36 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QY
Text copyright © Anna Dale 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This electronic edition published in August 2010 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 4088 1167 2
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