The Magic City | Page 2

white little garden gate. And a man was coming out of it--a man who
was not one of the friends they both knew. He turned and came to meet
them. Helen put her hand on the reins--a thing which she had always
taught Philip was never done--and the pony stopped. The man, who
was, as Philip put it to himself, 'tall and tweedy,' came across in front of
the pony's nose and stood close by the wheel on the side where Helen
sat. She shook hands with him, and said, 'How do you do?' in quite the
usual way. But after that they whispered. Whispered! And Philip knew
how rude it is to whisper, because Helen had often told him this. He
heard one or two words, 'at last,' and 'over now,' and 'this evening,
then.'
After that Helen said, 'This is my brother Philip,' and the man shook
hands with him--across Helen, another thing which Philip knew was
not manners, and said, 'I hope we shall be the best of friends.' Pip said,
'How do you do?' because that is the polite thing to say. But inside
himself he said, 'I don't want to be friends with you.'
Then the man took off his hat and walked away, and Philip and his
sister went home. She seemed different, somehow, and he was sent to
bed a little earlier than usual, but he could not go to sleep for a long
time, because he heard the front-door bell ring and afterwards a man's
voice and Helen's going on and on in the little drawing-room under the
room which was his bedroom. He went to sleep at last, and when he
woke up in the morning it was raining, and the sky was grey and

miserable. He lost his collar-stud, he tore one of his stockings as he
pulled it on, he pinched his finger in the door, and he dropped his
tooth-mug, with water in it too, and the mug was broken and the water
went into his boots. There are mornings, you know, when things
happen like that. This was one of them.
Then he went down to breakfast, which tasted not quite so nice as usual.
He was late, of course. The bacon fat was growing grey with waiting
for him, as Helen said, in the cheerful voice that had always said all the
things he liked best to hear. But Philip didn't smile. It did not seem the
sort of morning for smiling, and the grey rain beat against the window.
After breakfast Helen said, 'Tea in the garden is indefinitely postponed,
and it's too wet for lessons.'
That was one of her charming ideas--that wet days should not be made
worse by lessons.
'What shall we do?' she said; 'shall we talk about the island? Shall I
make another map of it? And put in all the gardens and fountains and
swings?'
The island was a favourite play. Somewhere in the warm seas where
palm trees are, and rainbow-coloured sands, the island was said to
be--their own island, beautified by their fancy with everything they
liked and wanted, and Philip was never tired of talking about it. There
were times when he almost believed that the island was real. He was
king of the island and Helen was queen, and no one else was to be
allowed on it. Only these two.
But this morning even the thought of the island failed to charm. Philip
straggled away to the window and looked out dismally at the soaked
lawn and the dripping laburnum trees, and the row of raindrops hanging
fat and full on the iron gate.
'What is it, Pippin?' Helen asked. 'Don't tell me you're going to have
horrid measles, or red-hot scarlet fever, or noisy whooping-cough.'

She came across and laid her hand on his forehead.
'Why, you're quite hot, boy of my heart. Tell sister, what is it?'
'You tell me,' said Philip slowly.
'Tell you what, Pip?'
'You think you ought to bear it alone, like in books, and be noble and
all that. But you must tell me; you promised you'd never have any
secrets from me, Helen, you know you did.'
Helen put her arm round him and said nothing. And from her silence
Pip drew the most desperate and harrowing conclusions. The silence
lasted. The rain gurgled in the water-pipe and dripped on the ivy. The
canary in the green cage that hung in the window put its head on one
side and tweaked a seed husk out into Philip's face, then twittered
defiantly. But his sister said nothing.
'Don't,' said Philip suddenly, 'don't break it to me; tell me straight out.'
'Tell you what?' she said again.
'What is it?' he said. 'I know how these unforetold misfortunes happen.
Some