on the steps that led up to the white statue, the voice of the fourth child said sadly: “I’m not ungrateful, but I’m rather hungry. And you can’t be always taking things for me through your larder window. If you like, I’ll go back and live in the castle. It’s supposed to be haunted. I suppose I could haunt it as well as anyone else. I am a sort of ghost now, you know. I will if you like.”

“Oh no,” said Kathleen kindly; “you must stay with us.”

“But about food. I’m not ungrateful, really I’m not, but breakfast is breakfast, and bread’s only bread.”

“If you could get the ring off, you could go back.”

“Yes,” said Mabel’s voice, “but you see, I can’t. I tried again last night in bed, and again this morning. And it’s like stealing, taking things out of your larder—even if it’s only bread.”

“Yes, it is,” said Gerald, who had carried out this bold enterprise.

“Well, now, what we must do is to earn some money.”

Jimmy remarked that this was all very well. But Gerald and Kathleen listened attentively.

“What I mean to say,” the voice went on, “I’m really sure it’s all for the best, me being invisible. We shall have adventures—you see if we don’t.”

“ ‘Adventures,’ said the bold buccaneer, ‘are not always profitable.’ ” It was Gerald who murmured this.

“This one will be, anyhow, you see. Only you mustn’t all go. Look here, if Jerry could make himself look common—”

“That ought to be easy,” said Jimmy. And Kathleen told him not to be so jolly disagreeable.

“I’m not,” said Jimmy, “only—”

“Only he has an inside feeling that this Mabel of yours is going to get us into trouble,” put in Gerald. “Like La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and he does not want to be found in future ages alone and palely loitering in the middle of sedge and things.”4

“I won’t get you into trouble, indeed I won’t,” said the voice. “Why, we’re a band of brothers for life, after the way you stood by me yesterday. What I mean is—Gerald can go to the fair and do conjuring.”

“He doesn’t know any,” said Kathleen.

“I should do it really,” said Mabel, “but Jerry could look like doing it. Move things without touching them and all that. But it wouldn’t do for all three of you to go. The more there are of children, the younger they look, I think, and the more people wonder what they’re doing all alone by themselves.”

“The accomplished conjurer deemed these the words of wisdom,” said Gerald; and answered the dismal “Well, but what about us?” of his brother and sister by suggesting that they should mingle unsuspected with the crowd. “But don’t let on that you know me,” he said; “and try to look as if you belonged to some of the grown-ups at the fair. If you don’t, as likely as not you’ll have the kind policemen taking the little lost children by the hand and leading them home to their stricken relations—French governess, I mean.”

“Let’s go now,” said the voice that they never could get quite used to hearing, coming out of different parts of the air as Mabel moved from one place to another. So they went.

The fair was held on a waste bit of land, about half a mile from the castle gates. When they got near enough to hear the steam-organ of the merry-go-round, Gerald suggested that as he had ninepence he should go ahead and get something to eat, the amount spent to be paid back out of any money they might make by conjuring. The others waited in the shadows of a deep-banked lane, and he came back, quite soon, though long after they had begun to say what a long time he had been gone. He brought some Barcelona nuts, red-streaked apples, small sweet yellow pears, pale pasty gingerbread, a whole quarter of a pound of peppermint bullseyes, and two bottles of ginger-beer.

“It’s what they call an investment,” he said, when Kathleen said something about extravagance. “We shall all need special nourishing to keep our strength up, especially the bold conjurer.”

They ate and drank. It was a very beautiful meal, and the far-off music of the steam-organ added the last touch of festivity to the scene. The boys were never tired of seeing Mabel eat, or rather of seeing the strange, magic-looking vanishment of food which was all that showed of Mabel’s eating. They were entranced by the spectacle, and pressed on her more than her