by Edward Eager
Now, as the helmet came away, her long brown hair streamed down onto her shoulders, and her nine-year-old, little-girl face blinked at the astonished crowd.
Those sitting nearest the ringside saw. Sir Mordred tittered. Sir Agravaine sneered. The mean knights who were jealous of Sir Launcelot began to laugh, and mingled with the laughter were the cruel words, "Beaten by a girl!"
Some horrid little urchins took up the cry, and made a rude song of it:
"Launcelot's a chur-ul,"
Beaten by a gir-ul!"
Sir Launcelot came to, and sat up. He heard the laughter, and he heard the song. He looked at Katharine. Katharine looked away, but not before he had recognized her. He got to his feet. There was silence all round the field; even the mean knights stopped laughing.
Sir Launcelot came over to Katharine. "Why have you done this to me?" he said.
"I didn't mean to," said Katharine. She began to cry.
With flushed cheeks but with head held high, Sir Launcelot strode to King Arthur's platform and knelt in the dust before it. In a low voice he asked leave to go on a far quest, a year's journey away at least, that he might hide his shame till by a hundred deeds of valor he would win back his lost honor and expunge the dread words, "Beaten by a girl," forever.
King Arthur did not trust himself to speak. He nodded his consent.
Queen Guinevere did not even look at Sir Launcelot, as he walked away from the field of tournament.
Katharine went on crying.
Merlin spoke a word in King Arthur's ear. King Arthur nodded. He rose, offered an arm to Guinevere, and led her from the stand. Merlin spoke another word, this time to the attendant knights. They began clearing the people from the field.
Most of the people went quietly, but three children in the front row of the grandstand put up quite a fuss, saying that they had to find their sister Katharine, who'd done something terrible, but a sister was a sister and they'd stick up for her, anyway. The knights cleared them away with the rest.
Presently, after what seemed like at least a year, Katharine found herself alone before Merlin. She was still crying.
Merlin looked at her sternly.
"Fie on your weeping," he said. "I wot well that ye be a false enchantress, come here in this guise to defeat our champion and discredit our Table Round!"
"I'm not! I didn't!" said Katharine.
"Ye be, too!" said Merlin, "and you certainly have! After today our name is mud in Camelot!"
"Oh, oh," wept Katharine.
"Silence, sorceress," said Merlin. He waved his wand at her. "I command that you appear before me in your true form!"
Immediately Katharine wasn't tall, or strong, or in armor any more, but just Katharine.
Merlin looked surprised.
"These fiends begin early!" he said. "However, doubtless ye be but the instrument of a greater power." He waved his wand again. "I command that your allies, cohorts, aids, accomplices and companions be brought hither to stand at your side!"
Jane and Mark and Martha appeared beside Katharine, looking nearly as unhappy and uncomfortable as she.
Merlin looked really quite startled. Then he shook his head sadly.
"So young," he said, "and yet so wicked!"
"We're not!" said Martha, making a rude face.
The behavior of the others was more seemly.
"You see, sir," began Mark.
"We didn't mean to," began Jane.
"Let me," said Katharine. "I started it."
And in a rush of words and tears she told Merlin everything, beginning with the charm, and her wish to travel back in time, and going on to what she had hoped to do, and what she'd done and where she'd gone wrong.
"I wanted to do a good deed," she said, "and I did one, when I rescued Launcelot from that old dungeon. But then he wasn't properly grateful at all, and made me undo it, so he could rescue himself, all for the sake of his old honor! And that made me cross! And just now I pretended I was defeating him so the other knights wouldn't be so jealous of him, but really I was just trying to get back at him for being so stuck-up! And I always wanted to fight in a real tournament, anyway!"
"Well, now you have," said Merlin, "and what good did you do by it? Just made everybody thoroughly unhappy!"
"I know," said Katharine.
"That's what comes of meddling," said Merlin. "There is a pattern to history, and when you try to change that pattern, no good may follow."
Katharine hung her head.
"However," went on Merlin, and to the surprise of the four children he was smiling now, "all is not lost. I have a few magic tricks of my own, you know. Let me see, how shall I handle this? I could turn time back, I suppose, and make it as though this day had never happened, but it would take a lot out of me."
"Really?" said Katharine in surprise. "It would be a mere nothing to us!
Merlin looked at her a bit grimly.
"Oh, it would, would it?" he said.
"Oh, yes," went on Katharine happily. "I could wish Launcelot were twice as near as here again, and then I could wish that he'd defeat me twice, and then I could wish that the people would honor him twice as much as they ever did, and then I could wish..."
"Hold!" cried Merlin, in alarm. "A truce to your wishes, before you get us in worse trouble! I think I had best see this wonderful charm of yours." He made a pass at Katharine with his wand. "If there be any magic among you, let it appear now or forever hold its peace."
Katharine's hot hand, which for so long had clutched the charm, opened in spite of itself, and the charm lay in plain sight, on her palm.
Merlin looked at it. His eyes widened. He swept his tall hat from his head, and bowed low before the charm, three times. Then he turned to the children.
"This is a very old and powerful magic," he said. "Older and more powerful than my own. It is, in fact, too powerful and too dangerous for four children, no matter how well they may intend, to. have in their keeping. I am afraid I must ask you to surrender it."
He made another pass with his wand. The charm leaped gracefully from Katharine's hand to his own.
Mark spoke.
"But it came to us in our own time," he said, "and that's a part of history, too, just as much as this is. Maybe we were meant to find it. Maybe there's some good thing we're supposed to do with it. There is a pattern to history, and when you try to change that pattern, no good may follow."
Merlin looked at him.
"You are a wise child," he said.
"Just average," said Mark, modestly.
"Dear me," said Merlin. "If that be so, if all children be as sensible as you in this far future time you dwell in..." He broke off. "What century did you say you come from?"
"We didn't," said Mark, "but it's the twentieth."
"The twentieth century," mused Merlin. "What a happy age it must be—truly the Golden Age that we are told is to come."
He stood thinking a moment. Then he smiled.
"Very well. Go back to your twentieth century," he said, "and take your magic with you, and do your best with it. But first, I have something to say."
He held the charm at arm's length, rather as though he feared it might bite him, and addressed it with great respect.
"I wish," he said, "that in six minutes it may be as though these children had never appeared here. Except that they—and I—will remember. And I further wish that our tournament may begin all over again and proceed as originally planned by history. Only twice as much so," he added, to be on the safe side.
"Now may I have it back, please?" Katharine asked, when he had done.
"In a minute," said Merlin. "By the way, have you been making a lot of wishes lately? It feels rather worn out to me. It won't last forever, you know."
"Oh dear, we were afraid of that," said Jane. "How many more do we get?"
"That would be telling," said Merlin. "But you'd best not waste too many. It might be later than you think."
"Oh!" cried Martha. "Maybe we'll nev
er get home!"
"Don't worry," said Merlin, smiling at her. "There are still a few wishes left for you. And one more for me." Again he held the charm out before him.
"And I thirdly wish," he said, "for the future protection of the world from the terrible good intentions of these children, and for their protection against their own folly, that this charm may, for twice the length of time that it shall be in their hands, grant no further wishes carrying said children out of their own century and country, but that they may find whatsoever boon the magic may have in store for them in their own time and place." He put the charm into Katharine's hands. "And now you'd best be going. Because in less than a minute by my wish, it will be as though you'd never appeared here. And if you aren't home when that happens, goodness knows where you will be!"
"But what about the good deed I wished?" said Katharine. "None of the ones I tried worked out!"
"My child," said Merlin, and his smile was very kind now, "you have done your good deed. You have brought me word that for as far into time as the twentieth century, the memory of Arthur, and of the Round Table, which I helped him to create, will be living yet. And that in that far age people will still care for the ideal I began, enough to come back through time and space to try to be of service to it. You have brought me that word, and now I can finish my work in peace, and know that I have done well. And if that's not a good deed, I should like to know what is. Now good-bye. Wish quickly. You have exactly seventeen seconds."
Katharine wished.
And because their mother and Miss Bick had been worried yesterday by their being so long away, she put in that when they got home, they should only have been gone two minutes, by real time.
This was really quite thoughtful of Katharine. Perhaps she, too, like Mark the day before, had learned something during her day of adventure.
The next thing the four children knew, they were sitting together in Katharine and Martha's room, and it was still that morning, and they had only been away from home a minute. Yet that minute was packed with memories.
"Did we dream it?" Katharine asked.
"I don't think so, or we wouldn't all remember it," said Mark.
"And we all do, don't we?" said Jane.
And they all did.
"What did that last mean, that Merlin wished on the charm?" Martha wanted to know.
"It means we have to keep our wishes close to home from now on," Mark told her.
"No more travels to foreign climes," said Jane, "and I was all set to take us on a pirate ship next!"
"No more olden times," said Mark, "and I've always wanted to see the Battle of Troy!"
"You might not have liked it, once you got there," said Katharine, from the depths of her experience. "Traveling in olden times is hard."
"I don't care," said Martha. "I don't care if I never travel at all. I'm glad to be home. Aren't you?"
And they all were.
5. What Happened to Martha
As a matter of fact, the four children were all so glad to be home that they stayed around the house all the rest of that day.
And that one minute of the morning had been so crowded with adventure that somehow they didn't feel as though they wanted any more excitement for some time.
They put the charm away in its safe place under the flooring, and spent the morning and afternoon playing the most ordinary games they knew, even the tame childish ones that Martha liked and seldom got to play, like Statuary and Old Witch.
At dinner that night, when their mother asked them what they'd been doing all day, they said, "Oh, nothing," and seemed more interested in talking about what she'd been doing, at the office.
After dinner there weren't any secret conferences. Instead, the four children prevailed on their mother to join them in a game of Parcheesi.
And when she tired of Parcheesi, as mothers soon will, and offered to read them A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court until bedtime instead, Katharine said quickly that she'd rather hear a good, solid, down-to-normal, everyday book like Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.
All this was most unlike the four children.
When they'd finally gone to bed, their mother stole into their various rooms, and felt their foreheads and ears. But none of them had a fever.
The trouble was that the adventure with Sir Launcelot had seemed to point a moral.
And if you have ever had a moral pointed at you, you will know that it is not a completely pleasant feeling. You are grateful for being improved, and you hope you will remember and do better next time, but you do not want to think about it very much just now.
And, as Mark put it next morning, it was a moot question what to do with the charm next. Even wishing to do good deeds with it did not seem to be proof against the occurrence of that hot water in which the four children so often found themselves.
"Of course it has to be just nowadays and in our own country after this," Mark said, "but still! What if we messed up the President and Congress next time, the way we did King Arthur? We could cause a national emergency!"
"I know!" said Jane. "We must proceed with Utter Caution. I've been thinking about it all night, and I'm going to make my next wish really serious. I decided the two things I want most in the world are no more wars and that I knew everything!"
Katharine shook her head doubtfully.
"That's too serious," she said. "That's kind of like interfering with God. That might be even worse than trying to change history."
"Is there anything that's serious and fun at the same time?" Martha wondered.
It didn't seem very likely that there was.
Arid what with this problem, and the horrid thought that with each wish the charm's power was waning away, and that any day the next wasted wish might be its last, the four children decided to wait until tomorrow before getting on with the serious wishing.
Maybe by tomorrow Jane would have an inspiration. It was her turn next.
Meanwhile today they would have a good old-fashioned day out, the kind of day that had seemed the height of excitement to them, back in the time before the charm had crossed their path. They would put all their allowances together, go downtown on the street car and spend the day, have lunch and see a movie.
To phone their mother and persuade her to tell Miss Bick to let them go was a mere matter of five minutes' wheedling.
Miss Bick made her usual remarks of gloomy foreboding, but the children turned deaf ears, and assembled in Katharine and Martha's room.
"Shall we take it with us or leave it?" Katharine wanted to know.
No one needed to be told what "it" was.
"If we leave it Miss Bick'll be sure to find it," Mark pointed out, "no matter how carefully concealed."
"Think if she made a wish and got half of it!" cried Martha. "What do you suppose it would be?"
"I'd rather not," said Jane. "Some depths are better left unplumbed."
So Jane brought the charm along, wrapped in a special package of old Christmas paper, in her handbag. All the children tied strings around the little finger of each hand, to remind them not to wish for anything, no matter what happened. Then they emerged, and stood waiting at the corner, where they had so often beguiled the summer days by putting pieces of watermelon on the car tracks and waiting for them to squish.
The ride downtown on the street car was uneventful—only the usual trouble between the people who wanted the windows left closed, and the four children, who wanted them open.
Downtown, the children looked in shop windows for a while, then entered that lovely place, the five-and-ten. They bought and ate some saltwater taffy, listened to a young lady play "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate" on the piano, and bought and ate some parched corn.
It was then time for lunch.
The four children always lunched at the best soda fountain in town. Today Jane ordered a banana split with chocolate ice cream and raspberry sauce, and Katharine enjoyed a Moonbeam Sundae, thick with pineapple syrup and three k
inds of sherbet. Martha always had the same thing, a soda she'd invented, marshmallow with vanilla ice cream, which made the others gag.
There were two things listed on the menu which had intrigued Mark for years. One was called celery soda and the other was called malt marrow, and Mark wondered very much what they could be. Each time he came he promised himself he'd order them next time, but next time his courage always failed. Today he thought of it, thought better of it, and had a double hot fudge dope.
After lunch it was time to choose what movie to see.
The children did this by first making a tour of all the movie theaters in town and looking at the pictures on the outside. A time of argument followed. Mark liked Westerns and thrilling escapes, but Martha wouldn't go inside any theater that had pictures of fighting.
Jane and Katharine liked ladies with long hair and big eyes and tragic stories. They wanted to see a movie called Barbara LaMarr in Sandra. Mark finally agreed, because there were a lot of pictures outside of a man who wore a mustache, and that meant he was the villain, and that meant that somebody would hit him sooner or later. Martha agreed because all the other theaters had either pictures with fighting or Charlie Chaplin.
All of the four children hated Charlie Chaplin, because he was the only thing grown-ups would ever take them to.
When they came into the theater Barbara LaMarr in Sandra had already reached its middle, and the children couldn't figure out exactly what was happening. But then neither could the rest of the audience.
"But, George, I do not seem to grasp it all!" the woman behind the four children kept saying to her husband.
The four children did not grasp any of it, but Barbara LaMarr had lots of hair and great big eyes, and when strong men wanted to kiss her and she pushed them away and made suffering faces at the audience with her eyebrows, Jane and Katharine thought it was thrilling, and probably quite like the way life was, when you were grown-up.