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The Unexplained Intellect
The relationship between intelligent systems and their environment is at
the forefront of research in cognitive science. The Unexplained Intellect:
Complexity, Time, and the Metaphysics of Embodied Thought shows how
computational complexity theory and analytic metaphysics can together
illuminate long-standing questions about the importance of that relationship.
It argues that the most basic facts about a mind cannot just be facts about
mental states, but must include facts about the dynamic, interactive mental
occurrences that take place when a creature encounters its environment.
In a discussion that is organized into four clear parts, Christopher Mole
begins by examining the mathematics of computational complexity, arguing
that the results from complexity theory create a puzzle about how human
intelligence could possibly be explained. Mole then uses the tools of analytic
metaphysics to draw a distinction between mental states and dynamic
mental entities, and shows that, in order to answer the complexity-theoretic
puzzle, dynamic entities must be understood to be among the most basic of
mental phenomena. The picture of the mind that emerges has important
implications for our understanding of intelligence, of action, and of the
mind’s relationship to the passage of time.
The Unexplained Intellect is the first book to bring insights from the
mathematics of computational complexity to bear in an enquiry into
the metaphysics of the mind. It will be essential reading for scholars and
researchers in the philosophy of mind and psychology, for cognitive scientists,
and for those interested in the philosophical importance of complexity.
Christopher Mole is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University
of British Columbia, Canada, where he also teaches in the Programme in
Cognitive Systems. He is the author of Attention is Cognitive Unison: An
Essay in Philosophical Psychology (2011).

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The Unexplained Intellect
Complexity, time, and the metaphysics of
embodied thought
Christopher Mole

First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Christopher Mole
The right of Christopher Mole to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Names: Mole, Christopher, 1979-
Title: The unexplained intellect : complexity, time, and the metaphysics of
embodied thought / by Christopher Mole.
Description: 1 [edition]. | New York : Routledge, 2016. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015034077
Subjects: LCSH: Philosophy of mind.
Classification: LCC BD418.3 .M645 2016 | DDC 128/.2--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015034077
ISBN: 978-1-138-18198-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-64632-9 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by HWA Text and Data Management, London

Harnessed, like yoked oxen, to a heavy task, we feel the play of our muscles
and joints, the weight of the plough, and the resistance of the soil. To act and
to know that we are acting, to come into touch with reality and even to live
it, but only so far as it concerns the work that is being accomplished and the
furrow that is being ploughed, such is the function of human intelligence.
Yet a beneficent fluid bathes us, from which we draw the very force
to labour and to live. From this sea of life, in which we are immersed,
we are continually drawing something, and we feel that our being, or at
least the intellect that guides it, has been formed therein by a kind of local
concentration.
Philosophy can only be an effort to dissolve again into the whole.
Intelligence, reabsorbed into its principle, may thus live back again its own
genesis. But this enterprise cannot be achieved in one stroke; it is necessarily
collective and progressive. It consists in an interchange of impressions which,
correcting and adding to each other, will end by expanding the humanity that
is in us, and even by making us transcend it.
Bergson, Creative Evolution, p. 191

Contents
Preface ix
Part 1
The complexity of intelligence 1
1 The neglect of noology 3
2 The philosophical relevance of theoretical
computer science 14
3 The explanatory consequences of imperfection 33
4 Sources of intractability 51
Part 2
Temporal orientation 67
5 The psychological arrow of time 69
6 Temporally chiral attitudes 79
7 Episodic and semantic memory 85
Part 3
A point of local metaphysics 95
8 Metaphysical questions 97

viii Contents
9 The modal signature of ontological dependence 104
10 Leveraging the mind 110
11 An argument for dynamic foundations 115
Part 4
The perdurance of intelligent thought 125
12 Epistemic conduct 127
13 Encountering events 133
14 Action as an epistemic encounter 136
15 Inference as an epistemic encounter 144
16 Encountering unrepresented facts 150
17 Encounters first 156
18 The achievement of intelligence 163
Bibliography 169
Index 178

Preface
Nobody really understood how material beings could display the essential
properties of life, nor how they could possibly be intelligent, until the middle
decades of the twentieth century. Our breakthrough in understanding the
first of these came from discoveries about the structure and function of the
nucleic acids. Our breakthrough in understanding the second came from
discoveries about the ways in which physical systems can be engineered so as
to perform computations. The technological developments that have been
consequent on these discoveries are as obvious as they are pervasive, but
in neither case is the accompanying revolution in our understanding yet
complete.
This book is concerned with ongoing developments in the second of
these understandings: It is concerned with the idea – first articulated by Alan
Turing (although it had probably occurred to Ada Lovelace a hundred years
previously) – that intelligence might become explicable if we treat intelligent
thought as if it were some sort of computation.
Arguments have been made for the wholesale rejection of this idea ever
since Turing proposed it (see, for example, Taube 1961). Many people find
the idea to be so antipathetic as to be incredible. But when Turing’s notion of
computation has been properly understood, his claim that intelligent thought
might be modelled as a computation becomes more or less indubitable.
That claim does not require us to disparage or neglect the innumerable
ways in which persons are unlike robots. It equips us with unprecedentedly
sophisticated tools for investigating the foundations of intelligence.
When we apply these tools we uncover a philosophical puzzle, the
difficulty and importance of which have not been widely appreciated. What
we discover is that there would be something inexplicable about the physical
implementation of any intelligence that was fully general: if the mental states
that we handle intelligently are thought of as corresponding to representations
that are handled computationally, and if our intelligence is thought to be fully
general, in the sense of being reliably applicable across an unlimited range
of contexts, then it can be shown (given some uncontroversial assumptions)
that any computation that could be responsible for our intelligence would
need to be so complex that it would be physically impossible to implement.

x Preface
Part 1 of this book explains what this means, establishes the argument for it,
and encourages the reader to find it puzzling.
Those philosophers and psychologists who are aware of this result have
usually responded to it by concluding, without much surprise, that it shows
our intellectual capabilities to be necessarily limited as to the contexts in
which they are reliably applicable. If fully general intelligence is physically
impossible then, these theorists say, our intelligence cannot be fully general.
They do not take this to be news. In the chapters that follow I want to suggest
that there is more to be concerned about here than they have realized. The
impossibility-results that we consider in Part 1 can tell us more about the
nature of intelligence than has generally been appreciated, and more about
the role that is played by computation in the explanation of it.
* * *
The analogy between the explanation of intelligence and the explanation of
life is, here as elsewhere, a useful one (as Robert Wilson has emphasized, in
the two extant volumes of his ‘The Individual in the Fragile Sciences’ trilogy
(Wilson 2004, 2005)). In both cases the pioneering discoveries of the mid-
twentieth century introduce complications that have taken decades to come
clearly into focus. The things that were discovered in the nineteen fifties
– about chromosomes, DNA, RNA, and genes – are just as important as
everyone thought that they would be, for the purposes of explaining how the
phenomena of life are possible, but they turn out to achieve their explanatory
work in a way that is not quite as straightforward as one might initially have
supposed. It was too optimistic to expect there to be any straightforward
mapping from an intuitive taxonomy of phenotypic traits onto a catalogue of
genes, or from genes to the contiguous sequences of base pairs on a strand of
DNA. Our explanations for the inheritance and development of an organism’s
conspicuous features need to be more complicated than that. In particular,
they need to be more attentive to facts about the larger embryological and
ecological systems within which the nucleic acids accomplish their work.
It is much the same with the story according to which the brain produces
intelligence by performing computations on structured representations:
That computational story is brilliantly illuminating of something that would
otherwise be quite mysterious, but it is a story that is liable to an over-
simplified interpretation, in which we omit those details of context that must
in fact play a central role. Much as we are beginning to understand that
the facts about DNA accomplish their explanatory work only when taken
together with facts about embryology and development (and much as there
is room for dispute, in any particular case, about which of these contributors
most deserves to be emphasized), so we are coming to understand that the
facts about a brain’s information-handling accomplish their explanatory
work only when taken as one part of an account in which the organism’s
rapport with its environment also figures.

Preface xi
Steps towards the giving of such an account were taken by the advocates
of ‘cybernetics’, from as early as the end of the nineteen forties. Steps to
the same end continue to be taken by advocates of the several more or
less controversial theses that go under the name of ‘Embodied Cognition’.
Starting in the nineteen seventies, one can find frequent statements in the
literature on artificial intelligence – most notably in the pioneering work
of Herbert Simon – that draw attention to the necessity of considering the
structure of the environment within which an intelligent performance comes
to be accomplished. In the early nineties the importance of this environment
was very prominently emphasized by Rodney Brooks, as one part of his
seminal contribution to the field of robotics. By the middle of that decade
the emphasis on interactions between organisms and their environment had
developed into an interdisciplinary research programme, operating under
the rubrics of ‘Situated’ or ‘Embedded’ Cognition. That programme drew
on cognitive psychology, and on ‘the new AI’. It sometimes incorporated
insights from critical theory, from cognitive linguistics, and from various
strands of anthropology.
The Situated Cognition programme has by now come to enjoy a canonical
status, albeit in a position at the canon’s periphery. I agree with a great deal
of the work that has been accomplished within it, but I do not think that
the programme’s logical or metaphysical foundations have been properly
articulated. This is partly because the logical foundations incorporate some
mathematical facts that have only recently been discovered (I discuss these
in Chapter 3). It is partly because the metaphysical foundations incorporate
some points about ontological dependence, and about contrasting modes of
temporal extension, that have only recently been elucidated by researchers
in analytic metaphysics. (I discuss these in Chapters 9 and 10.)
One result of these foundations remaining obscure has been that the
advocates of Situated Cognition have found it easier to agree on a general
methodological orientation than on any particular tenets or claims. That
orientation has pointed them away from the methods and theories of
computer science. In Esther Thelen and Linda B. Smith’s 1994 book, A
Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action;
in Timothy Van Gelder and Robert Port’s 1995 collection, Mind as
Motion; and in the various influential works of J. Scott Kelso (e.g. Kelso
1995), the theorists who have done most to emphasize the importance of
interactions between the thinking creature and its environment have also
been the theorists who have emphasized the fact that they could model
such interactions with the formal apparatus of dynamic systems theory, and
so had little use for the algorithms of ‘classically computational’ models,
such as were favoured by their rivals and predecessors. In philosophy too,
an emphasis on the explanatory importance of the rapport between an
organism and its environment has tended to be accompanied by an hostility
towards computational explanation. This can be seen in the pioneering
works of Hubert Dreyfus, John Haugeland, Susan Hurley, and John Searle.

xii Preface
More recently it can be seen in the work of Anthony Chemero, who pitches
the programme of his ‘Radical Embodied Cognitive Science’ as being a
‘non-representational, embodied, ecological’ alternative to the tradition of
‘rationalist, computational psychology’ (Chemero 2009 p. ix).
Although I think it is crucially important to recognize the role played
by the environment in the explanation of intelligence, I regard the hostility
to computer science that has typically accompanied this recognition as
wrongheaded. An appreciation of the importance that attaches to the
interactions between an organism and its environment need not lead us
away from computation, nor away from representation. When properly
understood, these are not notions that we could reasonably hope to get
away from. The importance of the rapport between an organism and its
environment must instead be understood from a broadly computational
perspective. This book is an attempt to provide such an understanding. It
shows that we must take account of the interactions between an organism
and its environment in order to understand how it is that computation
could be adequate to the task of explaining intelligence. It then suggests that
the way in which we should take account of these organism-environment
interactions is by placing them into a metaphysically foundational role. The
thing that we need to realize is that such interactions are, metaphysically
speaking, among the most basic of mental phenomena.
I explain what this means, argue for it, and explore its consequences,
in a discussion that has four parts. The first part is much the longest. It
explains why human intelligence is something that we should find puzzling,
and why the mid-twentieth-century insights into computation have made
that puzzle clearer. The book’s second part turns away from the results of
computational complexity theory in order to consider the special significance
that the passing of time has, for us and for any of the other intelligent
creatures that we meet with, or that we might imagine. This enables us
to introduce some ideas – about memory and about our dynamic ways of
encountering the world – that will turn out to have a crucial role to play in
the arguments of Parts 3 and 4. The main business of these last parts is to
show that our difficulties in accounting for our psychological orientation
with respect to time are indications of the need to shift our philosophical
focus away from mental states – which are altogether too static – and
towards a theory of the mind in which it is dynamic mental entities that are
taken to be metaphysically foundational. I argue that we should approach
the computational explanation of intelligence by putting our capacity for
intelligent thought on dynamic metaphysical foundations. It is Part 3 that
provides the metaphysical framework within which the requisite claims
about ‘metaphysical foundations’ should be understood. Part 4 examines the
philosophical work that can be accomplished by those claims.
Metaphysical theories are sometimes regarded with suspicion by
theorists who are committed to a methodology that is strictly scientific,
and practitioners of metaphysics have themselves been much occupied with

Preface xiii
disputes about the way in which metaphysical claims should be construed.
Part 3 therefore begins by articulating a very minimal meta-metaphysical
framework. In these parts of the book I hope to have said enough to have
indicated the import of the metaphysical claims that I am making but, as
with the mathematical results of Part 1, this framework is specified with a
minimum of technical detail.
* * *
This book is not an attempt to explain intelligence. At most it gives an
indication of the direction from which that explanatory project needs to
be approached. In writing it, my intention has been to follow the lovely
example of William Hazlitt:
I have endeavoured simply to point out what it is that is to be accounted
for, the general feeling with which a reflecting man should set out in
search of the truth, and the impossibility of ever arriving at it, if at
the outset we completely cover over our own feelings with maps of the
brain, dry skulls, musical chords, pendulums, and compasses, or think
of looking into the bottom of our own minds by means of any other
instrument than a sharpened intellect.
(Hazlitt 1805, p. 56)
The first draft of this book was completed in the academic year 2011-
2012, during which time I held an Early Career Scholarship at the Peter
Wall Institute of Advanced Study. Many thanks are due to the Wall Institute:
I learned a good deal from my fellow Wall Scholars, and benefitted greatly
from the reduction in teaching load that this scholarship afforded. Although
that reduction in teaching enabled me to get this book written, it was
only through the business of teaching that the ideas contained in it were
developed. In the spring of 2013 I taught most of this book’s material in a
graduate seminar. The participants in that seminar know only too well how
many unclarities and errors they helped to remove, and how many ideas they
themselves contributed. This book would have been much weaker without
their help, and I thank all of them for their generosity and commitment. The
other crucial contribution that teaching has made to the writing of this book
is through the influence of my several brilliant colleagues in the University
of British Columbia’s Cognitive Systems Programme. I’ve learned invaluable
lessons from teaching with them. It was thanks to them that I found my
way into the computer scientific literature that provides the foundations
for the argument of this book’s first part. For this I am extremely grateful.
Having found my way into that literature I would certainly have got lost in
it had it not been for the generosity and brilliance of Lior Silberman, who
very patiently guided me through some proofs and concepts that I could
never otherwise have understood. I owe enormous thanks to him. Thanks

xiv Preface
are also due to Bryan Renne, who provided comments on the book’s entire
first draft, and to Adam Morton, whose encouragement was heartening, and
whose influence on the thinking that is presented in the concluding parts of
this book is more thoroughgoing than my sparse references to his published
works might indicate.
The philosophical position that I attempt to articulate in this book is one
in which the having of a mind is, most fundamentally, a matter of conducting
oneself with understanding, and in which there are forms of intelligence that
depend essentially on love. My last thanks are to Juliet O’Brien, for a home
in which these things are abundant.

Part 1
The complexity of
intelligence

1 The neglect of noology
1.1 Elements of mind
The philosophy of mind is very often concerned with the explanation of facts
that are obvious. One of these is the fact that mental states have content. The
belief that Vancouver is north of Seattle has, as its content, the proposition
that Vancouver is north of Seattle. If it had had a different content, it would
have been a different belief. The having of that content is therefore essential
to its being the particular belief that it is. Other mental states are related with
equal intimacy to the propositional contents that they carry.
Despite this essential role for content, in giving mental states their
identities, it may not be the case that every mental state has a content,
whether propositional or otherwise. Perhaps there are certain pure sensations
– such as tickles or twinges – that do not carry content by themselves (Block
1995). Perhaps there are certain states in which, as in ‘East Coker’, one is
‘conscious, but conscious of nothing’ (Eliot 1944, see also Thompson 2015).
Even among belief-like states, the having of content may not be absolutely
necessary: illusions might occasion mental states that are contentless
(Evans 1982, p. 173), but those states are nonetheless mental, and they are
sufficiently belief-like to be the causes of sincere speech.
Any of these examples might be questioned – and philosophers have
indeed questioned them – but even if they could all be established as cases in
which there really is a mental state without content, they would make only
limited trouble for the idea that the having of content is essential to the mind
(Brentano 1874). These examples can merely be treated as deviations from a
necessarily content-involving norm. Much as false or nonsensical utterances
would cease to have the character of speech acts if they occurred without
the background of meaningful attempts to speak the truth, so any system
in which content was never achieved might cease to have the character of
a mind. The having of content might then be essential to the mind, even if
some states of mind are contentless.
* * *

4 The complexity of intelligence
From the premise that content is essential to the mind, it can be argued
that perception must be too. A first argument to this effect is owing to the
empiricists. It starts from the idea that the content of our simplest thoughts
has to come from somewhere. The things and properties that feature in the
contents of a creature’s simplest thoughts are things that that creature gets
to think about only by meeting with them in experience: I, for example,
am able to think that this particular cup is this particular shade of blue,
only because I have had experiences of this cup, and of this blue (or of
some appreciably similar ones). The need for mental states to have contents
therefore brings with it a need for the subject of those states to be a subject of
perception, and so makes perception essential to the mind, just as content is.
This last claim can be endorsed, on only slightly different grounds, by
those whose epistemological sympathies are aligned with the rationalists, and
who are therefore committed to the existence of innate ideas, with contents
that are not derived from episodes in which the environment is perceptually
encountered. Even if a creature is born with an innate repertoire of concepts,
having such contents as ‘object’, ‘property’, or ‘noun phrase’ (as postulated
in Chomsky 1986, or Spelke and Kinzler 2007), the status of these innate
structures as concepts – and not as merely syntactic residents of the brain –
depends on the creature’s being able to make use of them during episodes in
which it encounters a world of property-bearing objects, or of meaningfully-
structured sentences. Even if perception is not the only route by which to
stock the mind with concepts, and even if our innate concepts do not need
to derive their contents from those that have been given in perception,
a perceptual encounter with the world is necessary for giving our innate
concepts their status as content bearers. Concepts without ‘intuitions’ are, as
the Kantians say, empty. The friend of innate ideas can therefore share the
empiricist’s commitment to the idea that perception is essential to the mind,
just as (and just because) the having of content is.
1.2 On not explaining intelligence
If it is right to say that every mind has content, including those that have got
going most recently, and if it is right to say that the simplest of contentful
states gain at least some of their content by having a more or less direct
relationship to perception, it must then be the case that every mind starts
with states that are contentful and perceptual. This suggests that perception
and contentfulness might be elementary in the mind, as well as being
essential to it: it suggests (although it does not entail) that if contentfulness
and perception emerge from the concatenation of something simpler, then it
cannot be from the concatenation of simpler mental things; for there are no
simpler mental things, in the minds where these phenomena have their first
instances, from which they could plausibly be built.
Explanations of content and perception therefore have a special,
foundational status in our philosophical investigations of the mind. And

The neglect of noology 5
since the simplest of minded creatures can enjoy contentful perceptions,
without needing to engage in very much intellectual activity, the explanation
of those perceptions must place few demands – and perhaps no demands at
all – on the intelligence of those creatures.
One consequence of this last point is, in the present context, worth
noting: since it is elementary mental phenomena that philosophers of
mind are typically trying to explain, and since those phenomena place few
or no demands on the intelligence of the creatures who enjoy them, such
intelligence must be a phenomenon that our typical philosophical work
stops short of explaining. Once we have allowed that a creature might have
the capacity to have contentful perception while remaining incapable of
intelligent thought, we have conceded that an explanation of the creature’s
capacity for such thought must go beyond the explanation of its capacity
for having those perceptions. Philosophy’s focus on the elementary mental
phenomena is a sensible piece of explanatory tactics, but it has resulted in
a philosophy of mind that is systematically negligent of the intellect: the
philosophy of perception is well established as a sub-field in the philosophy
of mind, with its own proprietary theories and questions (see, e.g. Fish
2010); the philosophical explanation of contentfulness is a similarly well-
established topic, for which several theories have been canonically proposed
and disputed (see, e.g. Fodor 1990). Noology has no such status.
* * *
Not all philosophers of mind study phenomena that they take to be
elementary or essential. Those who study consciousness often suggest that
there might be a ‘zombie mind’, in which consciousness was altogether
lacking (Chalmers 1996). They therefore take it that consciousness is
not essential to the mind in the way that we have suggested perception
and content must be. It is nonetheless plausible that consciousness, like
perception and content, is something that a relatively simple creature might
enjoy. This makes it reasonable to suppose that any explanation we might
give for consciousness should avoid being intellectualized. Like our theories
of content and perception, our philosophical theories of consciousness are
therefore in a business that casts no light on the explanation of intelligence.
Even the philosophy of cognitive science typically fails to attempt the
kind of explanatory work that a satisfactory account of intelligence would
require. One might have hoped that an account of cogitatio would be high
on the cognitive scientist’s research agenda, but it turns out to be only rarely
that cognitive scientists are concerned with intelligence per se. They are
concerned with memory, with ‘concept acquisition’, and with perception
(including the perception of significant, complex, and attention-demanding
stimuli). These are, of course, relevant to intelligence, but it is clear that they
are not the same thing as it. An explanation of them is not yet an explanation
of how intelligence can be possible.

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‘I see you ’ave—have,’ said the footman, more like Mrs.
Wilmington than ever. ‘Would you like to leave it? It’ll be a surprise
for his Lordship when ’e comes in,’ and the footman tittered.
‘He is here, then,’ said Caroline. ‘I mean, he’s not in London?’
‘His Lordship is not in London,’ said the footman. ‘Any other
questions? Always happy to say me catechism, ’m sheur.’
The children turned to go. They felt the need of a private
consultation.
‘Any particular neem?’ said the footman, and tittered again.
‘’Slordship’ll be dying to know who it was called,’ and once more he
tittered.
Charlotte turned suddenly and swiftly.
‘You need not trouble about our names,’ she said, ‘and I don’t
believe Lord Andore knows how you behave when he’s not there. He
doesn’t know yet, that is.’
‘No offence, Miss,’ said the footman very quickly.
‘We accept your apology,’ said Charlotte; ‘and we shall wait till
Lord Andore comes in.’
‘But, I say! Look here, you know’—the footman came down one
step in his earnestness—‘you can’t wait here, you know.’
‘Oh yes, we can,’ said Caroline, sitting down on the second step.
The others also sat down. It was Charles who said, ‘So there!’ and
Caroline had to nudge him and say, ‘Hush!’
‘We never called before at a house where they didn’t ask you in
and give you a chair to sit on. But if this is that kind of house,’ said
Charlotte grandly, ‘it does not matter. It is a fine day, luckily.’
‘Look here,’ said the footman behind them, now thoroughly
uneasy, ‘this won’t do, you know. There’s company expected. I can’t

have a lot of ragged children sitting on the steps like the First of
May.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Charlotte, without turning her head; ‘but if you
haven’t any rooms fit to ask us into, I’m afraid you’ll have to have us
sitting here.’
The three sat staring at the bright garden and the dancing
fountain.
‘Look here,’ said the footman, weakly blustering; ‘this is cheek.
That’s what this is. But you go now. Do you hear? Or must I make
you?’
‘We hear,’ said Caroline, speaking as calmly as one can speak
when one is almost choking with mingled rage, disappointment, fear,
and uncertainty.
‘And I defy you to lay a finger on your master’s visitors,’ said
Charlotte. ‘How do you know who we are? We haven’t given you our
names.’
The footman must have felt a sudden doubt. He hesitated a
moment, and then, muttering something about seeing Mr. Checkles,
he retired, leaving the children in possession of the field. And there
they sat, in a row, on Lord Andore’s steps, with the bouquet laid
carefully on the step above them.
It was very silent there in the grey-walled courtyard.
‘I say,’ whispered Charles, ‘let’s go. We’ve got the better of him,
anyhow. Let’s do a bunk before he comes back with some one we
can’t get the better of, thousands of stately butlers perhaps.’
‘Never,’ said Charlotte, whose hands were cold and trembling with
excitement. But Caroline said:
‘I wish Mr. Checkles might turn out to be a gentleman, the
everyday kind that we know. Lords’ servants seem more common

than other people’s, and I expect the Lord’s something like them.
They say, Like master like man.’
As if in answer to Caroline’s wish, a door in the wall opened,
showing a glimpse of more garden beyond, and a jolly-faced youth
came towards them. He was a very big young man, and his clothes,
which were of dust-coloured Harris tweed, were very loose. He
looked like a sixth-form boy, and Charles at once felt that here was a
man and a brother. So he got up and went towards the new-comer
with the simple greeting, ‘Hullo!’
‘Hullo!’ said the sixth-form boy, with a friendly and cheerful grin.
‘I say,’ said Charles confidentially, as he and the big boy met on
the grass, ‘there isn’t really any reason why we shouldn’t wait here if
we want to?’
‘None in the world,’ said the big boy; ‘if you’re sure that what
you’re waiting for is likely to come, and that this is the best place to
wait for it in.’
‘We’re waiting for Lord Andore,’ said Caroline, who had picked up
the bouquet and advanced with it. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come,
because we don’t understand English menservants. In India they
behave differently when you call.’
‘What have the servants here done?’ the youth asked, frowning,
with his hands in his pockets.
‘Oh, nothing,’ said Charles in a hurry; ‘at least, I mean, we
accepted his apologies, so we can’t sneak.’
‘I wouldn’t call it sneaking to tell you,’ said Caroline confidingly,
‘because, of course, you’d promise on your honour not to tell Lord
Andore. We don’t want to get other people’s servants into trouble
when we’ve accepted their apologies. But the footman was rather
——’

At this moment the footman himself appeared at the top of the
steps with an elderly whiskered man in black, whom the children
rightly judged to be the butler. The two had come hastily out of the
door, but when they saw the children and their companion, the
footman stopped as if, as Charles said later, he had been turned to
stone, and only the butler advanced when the youth in the Harris
tweed said rather shortly, ‘Come here, Checkles!’ Checkles came,
quickly enough, and when he was quite close he astonished the
three C.’s much more than he will astonish you, by saying, ‘Yes,
m’lord!’
‘Tea on the terrace at once,’ said the Harris-tweeded one, ‘and tell
them not to be all day about it.’
Checkles went, and the footman too. Charlotte always believed
that the last glance he cast at her was not one of defiance but of
petition.
‘So you’re him,’ Charles was saying. ‘How jolly!’
But to Caroline it seemed that there was no time to waste in
personalities, however flattering. Lord Andore’s tea was imminent.
He was most likely in a hurry for his tea; it was past most people’s
tea-time already. So she suddenly held out the flowers, and said,
‘Here’s a bouquet. We made it for you. Will you please take it.’
‘That’s awfully good of you, you know,’ said Lord Andore; ‘thanks
no end!’ He took the bouquet and smelt it, plunged his nose into the
midst of the columbine, roses, cornflowers, lemon verbena, wistaria,
gladiolus and straw.
‘It’s not a very nice one, I’m afraid,’ said Caroline; ‘but you can’t
choose the nicest flowers when you have to look them out in two
books at once. It means Welcome, fair stranger; An unexpected
meeting; We are anxious and trembling; Confidence—no, we left
that out, because we hadn’t any; and Agreement, because we hope
you will.’

‘How awfully interesting. It was kind of you,’ said Lord Andore,
and before he could say any more Charlotte hastened to say:
‘You see, it’s not just an ordinary nosegay, please, and don’t
thank us, please, because it wasn’t to please you but to serve our
own ends, though, of course, if we’d known how nice you are, and if
we’d thought you’d care about one, we would have, in a minute.’
‘I see,’ said Lord Andore, quite as if he really had seen.
‘I’m sure you don’t,’ said Caroline; ‘don’t be polite, please. Say if
you don’t understand. What we want is justice. It’s one of your
tenants that had the cottage in your father’s time before you, and
they’re turning her out because there are some week-endy people
think the cottage is so pretty, with the flowers she planted, and the
arbour her father made, and the roses that came from her mother’s
brother in Cambridgeshire. And she said you didn’t know. And we
decided you ought to know. So we made you the nosegay and we
came. And we ought to go, and here’s her name and address on a
bit of paper, and I’m sorry it’s only pencil. And you will see justice
done, won’t you?’
‘It’s very kind of you,’ said Lord Andore slowly, ‘to take so much
interest in my tenants.’
‘There,’ said Charlotte; ‘of course we were afraid you’d say that.
But we didn’t mean to shove our oar in. We just went in for ginger-
beer, and Caro found her crying, and there’s a hornbeam arbour,
ever so old, and a few shillings a week can’t make any difference to
you, with a lovely castle like this to live in. And the motto on the
tombs of your ancestors is Flat Justicia. And it’s only bare justice we
want; and we saw the tomb on Sunday in church, with the sons and
daughters in ruffs.’
‘Stop!’ said Lord Andore. ‘I am only a poor weak chap. I need my
tea. Come and have some too, and I’ll try to make out what it’s all
about.’

‘Thanks awfully,’ said the three C.’s, speaking all together. And
Caroline added, ‘We mustn’t be long over tea, please, because we’ve
got to get home by half-past six, and it must be nearly that now.’
‘You shall get back at half-past six all right,’ said Lord Andore, and
led the way, a huge figure in the dust-coloured clothes, through the
little door by which he had come, on to a pleasant stone terrace with
roses growing all over and in and out and round about its fat old
balustrades.
‘Here’s tea,’ he said. And there it was, set on a fair-sized table
with a white cloth—a tea worth waiting for. Honey and jam and all
sorts of cakes, and peaches and strawberries. The footman was
hovering about, but Charles was the only one who seemed to see
him. It was bliss to Charles to see this proud enemy humbly bearing
an urn and lighting a spirit-lamp to make the tea of those whom he
had tried to drive from even the lowly hospitality of Lord Andore’s
doorstep.
‘Come on,’ said the big sixth-form-looking boy, who was Lord
Andore; ‘you must be starved. Cake first (and bread and butter
afterwards if you insist upon it) is the rule here. Milk and sugar?’
They all drank tea much too strong for them, out of respect to
their host, who had forgotten that when he was a little boy milk was
what one had at tea-time.
And slowly, by careful questioning, and by making a sudden rule
that no one was to say more than thirty-seven words without
stopping, Lord Andore got at the whole story in a form which he
could understand.
‘I see,’ he would say, and ‘I see,’ and then ask another question.
And at last when tea was really over, to the last gladly accepted
peach and the last sadly unaccepted strawberry, he stood up and
said:

‘If you don’t mind my saying so, I think you are regular little
bricks to have taken all this trouble. And I am really and truly very
much obliged. Because I do mean to be just and right to my
tenants, only it’s very difficult to know about things if nobody tells
you. And you’ve helped me a lot, and I thank you very much.’
‘Then you will?’ said Charlotte breathlessly.
‘Not let her be turned out of her cottage, she means,’ Caroline
explained.
‘She means the Mineral woman,’ said Charles.
‘Of course I won’t,’ said Lord Andore; ‘I mean, of course, I will. I
mean it’s all right. And I’ll drive you home, and if you’re a minute or
two late, I’ll make it all right with uncle.’
The motor was waiting outside the great arch that is held
between the two great towers of Andore Castle. It was a dream of a
car, and there was room for the three C.’s in front beside the driver,
who was Lord Andore himself.
The footman was there, and the proudest moment of the day for
Charles was that in which Lord Andore gave the petition bouquet
into that footman’s care, and told him to see that it was put in water,
‘Carefully, mind; and tell them to put it on the dinner-table to-night.’
The footman said ‘Yes, m’lord,’ as though he had never seen the
bouquet before. Charlotte’s proudest moment was when the woman
at the lodge gate had to curtsey when the motor passed out.
Rupert was waiting for them at their own lodge gate, and when
he saw the motor, his eyes grew quite round like pennies.
‘Oh, do stop, it’s Rupert,’ said the three C.’s; and Rupert was
bundled into the body of the car, where he travelled in lonely
splendour. Yet, even after that, and when the motor had gone away,
and the three C.’s had told him all their adventures and the splendid
success of their magic nosegay, Rupert only said:

‘It’s Chance, I tell you. It’s just accidental. Co—what’s its name—
incidence. It would all have happened just the same if you hadn’t
taken that hideous old mixed assorted haystack with you.’
‘Still disagreeable?’ said Charlotte brightly.
‘Oh, been all the same, would it?’ said Charles; ‘that’s all you
know.’
Rupert was bundled into the body of the car.
‘It’s not all I know,’ said Rupert; ‘as it happens, I know heaps of
things that you don’t. And I could find out more if I wanted to. So

there!’
‘Oh, Rupert, don’t be cross,’ said Caroline, ‘just when we’re all so
happy. I do wish you’d been there, especially at tea-time.’
‘I’m not cross,’ said Rupert. ‘As it happens, I was feeling extra
jolly until you came home.’
‘Oh, don’t,’ said Caroline; ‘do let’s call it Pax. We haven’t told you
half the little interesting things that happened yet. And if you can’t
believe in the magic, it’s your misfortune. We know you can’t help it.
We know you don’t unbelieve on purpose. We know we’re right, and
you think you know you are.’
‘It’s the other way round,’ said Rupert, still deep in gloom.
‘I know it is, when you think it, and when we think it, it’s the
other way,’ said Caroline. ‘Oh, Pax! Pax! Pax!’
‘All right,’ said Rupert. ‘I had a good swim. Your Mr. Penfold’s not
half a bad sort. He taught me a new side-stroke.’ But it was plain
that Rupert’s inside self still felt cloudy and far from comfortable.
Next day the three C.’s and Rupert, in the middle of Irish stew,
were surprised by the sudden rustling entrance of Mrs. Wilmington.
‘A person wishes to see you,’ she said to Caroline; ‘quite a poor
person. I asked her to wait till dinner was completed; but she says
that she hopes you will see her now, as she ought to commence
going home almost at once.’
‘Of course!’ said Caroline; ‘it must be the Mineral woman.’
‘She seemed to me,’ said Mrs. Wilmington, ‘to have an animal
face.’
But Caroline was already in the hall, and the figure that rose
politely from the oak chair was plainly—though disguised in her

Sunday clothes—that of the Mineral woman.
‘Oh, Miss!’ she said; ‘oh, Miss!’ She took hold of both Caroline’s
hands and shook them, but that was not enough. Caroline found
herself kissed on both cheeks, and then suddenly hugged; and ‘Oh,
Miss!’ the Mineral woman said; ‘oh, Miss!’ And then she felt for her
handkerchief in a black bag she carried, and blew her nose loudly.
Mrs. Wilmington had gone through the hall very slowly indeed;
but even she could not go slowly enough not to be gone by the time
the Mineral woman had, for the time being, finished with her nose.
And as Mrs. Wilmington went through the baize door, she heard
again, ‘Oh, Miss!’
Mrs. Wilmington came back five minutes later, and this time she
heard:
‘And it’s all right, Miss; and two bright new five-pound notes “to
buy more rose trees with,” and a letter in his own write of hand
thanking us for making the place so pretty; and I’m to be tenant for
life, Miss. And it’s all your doing, bless your kind heart. So I came to
tell you. I never thought I should feel like I do about any strange
little gell. It was all your doing, Miss, my dear.’
Which was a very mysterious and exciting thing to be overheard
by any housekeeper who was not in the secret. And a very
heartwarming and pleasant thing to be listened to by a little girl who
was.
‘You see,’ said Caroline, when she had told the others of the
Mineral woman’s happiness, ‘the magic always works.’

CHAPTER XVII
THE LE-O-PARD
‘We simply must write to Aunt Emmeline,’ said Caroline earnestly.
‘I’ve got three new pens and some scented violet ink. I got it at the
shop yesterday; it’s lovely. And I’ve been counting up the picture
post-cards she and Uncle Percival have sent us. There are forty-two,
and twenty-eight of those have come since we wrote last.’
‘I’d almost rather not have the post-cards; they make you feel so
horrid when you don’t write,’ said Charles. ‘Suppose we send picture
post-cards. You don’t have to write nearly so much.’
I think that would be shirking,’ said Charlotte, who did not want
to go out, and more than half believed what she said. ‘Come on. If
we must, we must. Necessity doesn’t know the law.’
‘You write, too, Rupert,’ said Charles kindly. ‘Put some Latin in.
They’ll love that. Or perhaps you’d tell me some to say. I can put it
in if you say how I ought to spell it.’
But Rupert said he couldn’t be bothered, and took down a book—
Jesse’s Anecdotes of Dogs it was, with alluring pictures and
delightful stories; but he did not really read it.
Caroline, looking up in an agony of ignorance as to the way you
spelt assafœtida, which the medicine book said was good for ‘pains
in the head brought about by much ſtudy of the printed book,’ saw
that Rupert’s eyes were fixed in a dismal stare on the portrait above
the mantelpiece, the portrait of Dame Eleanour.
He was looking at it as though he did not see it, and yet Charlotte
could not help saying, ‘Isn’t she splendid? She knew all about spells
and things. It’s her books we do it out of—at least, most of it.’

‘If she knew all about them, she knew what rotten rot they were,’
said Rupert. ‘You never try to do anything with your spells except
the things that would happen just the same without your spelling.’
‘What’s that about my spelling?’ asked Caroline, who had made a
bold dash for what she remembered of the way the word looked in
the medicine book, and written, in a violent violet smudge,
‘Aſſerphrodite.’
‘I say your magic isn’t real.’
‘We saw you when you were invisible,’ Caroline began, laying
down her pen, whose wet nib at once tried to dry, turning from
purple to golden green bronze. And then:
‘Yes, I know,’ said Rupert; ‘but if it’s really real, why don’t you do
something with it that can’t really happen in puris naturalatibus?—
that means just naturally. Why don’t you bring back Mrs.
Wilmington’s cat that’s lost? Or find my Kohinore pencil. Then there’s
a thing in that book Mr. Penfold’s got. He told me about it. You make
a wax image of your enemy and stick pins into it, and every time
you stick in a pin your enemy feels a pain in the part you stick the
pins into.’
‘How awfully wicked!’ said Caroline in an awe-struck voice.
‘Or you can roast the wax man in front of a fire, and as the wax
melts, the man wastes away,’ said Rupert hardly.
‘Oh, don’t!’ said Charlotte.
‘Yes, do,’ said Charles; ‘what else?’
‘Oh, nothing else. It’s better if you get a bit of the enemy’s hair,
and put that on your wax man’s head. Mr. Penfold read me bits out
of a piece of poetry about it.’
‘Didn’t he say it was wicked?’ Caroline asked.

‘Yes,’ said Rupert reluctantly; ‘but I know what’s wicked without
Mr. Penfold telling me, or you either. Just fancy how your enemy
would squirm when he felt the pin-pricks; they’d be like sword-
thrusts, you know, to him.’
‘Don’t!’ said Caroline; ‘don’t, Rupert, it’s horrid. Please don’t. I
don’t want to know about those sort of spells.’
‘Rupert wouldn’t do it, of course,’ said Charles. ‘He’s only talking.’
‘How do you know I wouldn’t?’ said Rupert savagely. ‘Next time
you have a pain in your leg, Caroline, you’ll think it’s growing pains,
but really it’ll be me, sticking a long hat-pin into the wax image I’ve
secretly made of you.’
Caroline got up.
‘Come, Char,’ she said, ‘we’ll go and sit in the drawing-room if
Rupert’s going on like this.’
‘He doesn’t mean it,’ said Charles again.
‘Of course I don’t,’ said Rupert, and suddenly smiled. ‘I don’t
know why I said it. Don’t be silly. There’s lots of things you could try,
though, and not hurt any one. Why don’t you——?’ He looked
vaguely round the room, and his eyes lighted once more on the
portrait. ‘Why don’t you make that come to life? If she was a witch,
her picture ought to be good for that, anyhow.’
‘I wish we could,’ said all the children together, with deep
earnestness.
‘Well, do it then,’ said Rupert. ‘That’s the sort of thing to make me
believe, not the duffing things you’ve kept on doing ever since I’ve
been here.’
There was a silence. Then, ‘How do you spell “impossible”?’ asked
Charles, and then nothing more was heard but the scratching of
violet pens.

But from that time, and in between all other thoughts and
happenings, Charlotte kept on thinking about that idea. If only the
picture could be made to come alive!
And Charles’s fancy played timidly with the idea of the wax man.
Not to hurt the person it was like, of course, but just to see if
anything happened. Not pins. But just pinching its foot a very very
very little, secretly, with the image in your pocket, when the person
it was the image of was there, just to see if the person jumped or
called out, as you do if you’re suddenly pinched, no matter how
gently.
Charlotte’s mind busied itself then and later, in and between other
thoughts, with the question of what was the matter with Rupert, and
whether something couldn’t be done to help him.
For there was no doubt of it. Rupert wasn’t at all what they had
first thought him. Sometimes, it is true, he would be as jolly as you
need wish a boy to be. He would start new games and play them in
the most amusing and satisfactory way. But always, sooner or later,
and generally sooner, the light of life seemed to go out of him, and
he would seem suddenly to be not only tired of the game but tired
of everything else, and not only tired of everything, but angry with
everybody.
‘I’m sure he’s bewitched,’ said Charlotte more than once in those
intimate moments when Caroline and she ‘talked things over’ as they
brushed their hair. ‘I shouldn’t wonder if somebody’s made a wax
image of him, and it’s when they stick the pins in it that he goes all
savage all in a minute.’
‘I do think that’s nonsense,’ Caroline always said. ‘I’m sure it
wouldn’t be allowed.’
‘How would you make an image of a person’s mind?’ Charlotte
woke Caroline up to ask, one night; and when Caroline with sleepy
sharpness said, ‘You can’t; go to sleep, do,’ Charlotte answered, ‘I
believe you can; there was something written under somebody’s

portrait in history, about painting his mind; and if you can paint a
mind, you can make a wax image of it. I believe that’s what
somebody’s done to Rupert, don’t you? And stuck knives into it? Oh,
well, if you will go to sleep!’ said Charlotte.
Rupert grew grumpier and grumpier as the days went on, and
seemed to care less and less for being with the three C.’s. He would
go for long walks by himself, and seemed to prefer to be with
William, who ‘put up’ with him, or even with Mrs. Wilmington, who
adored him, to being with the children.
‘And we thought it would be so jolly,’ sighed Charlotte; ‘and the
worst of it is Charles tries to imitate him. He speaks quite rudely
sometimes, even to you, Caro, and you know he always used to like
you best.’
The only thing Rupert seemed truly and constantly to care for
was swimming. He went down to the river with Mr. Penfold almost
every day, or met him at the bathing-place, and they swam together.
With Mr. Penfold, Rupert was nearly always at his best, perhaps
because Mr. Penfold never seemed to notice it when he wasn’t.
The village was growing more and more busy and excited as the
day drew near when Lord Andore’s coming of age was to be
celebrated by what the people called a Grangaileranfeat. This was to
be held in Lord Andore’s park and in certain meadows adjoining;
there were to be roundabouts and cocoanut-shies and shooting-
galleries, and a real circus, with a menagerie and performing
elephants and educated seals,—all free. The children looked forward
longingly to the day. Lord Andore had sent them cards with his
mother’s name and his on them in print, and the name of each child
in writing, requesting the pleasure of their company on the occasion
of Lord Andore’s twenty-first birthday. And they had joyously, and
with much violet ink, accepted. And the day came nearer and nearer.
It did not seem worth while to engage in any new magic while there
was this real pleasure to look forward to.

And then, the very day before the day, when the roundabouts had
arrived and been set up, and the menagerie was howling invitingly in
its appointed field, the cup of joy was dashed, as Charlotte said, into
little bits. Lady Andore slipped on an orange pip and broke her
ankle, and the festivities were postponed until September. So said a
card brought by the very footman who had not known their names.
‘He jolly well knows them now,’ said Charles. It was his only
comfort.
‘There’s many a pip ’twixt the cup and the lip,’ said Charlotte; and
Caroline said, ‘Oh, bother!’
Rupert said nothing. He had been invited too, of course, and had,
at moments, seemed pleased. Now he just took his cap and went
out, and came home late for tea. The three C.’s learned with feelings
of distress, mingled with anger, that Rupert had been to the
menagerie by himself, and had seen all the beasts, and that he had
also witnessed a performance of the circus people, which they had
thought it worth while to give to such of the villagers as cared to pay
for their amusements. He had seen everything, from the
accomplished elephants to the educated seals.
‘You might have told us you were going,’ said Charles.
‘You could have gone if you’d wanted to,’ said Rupert.
‘Never mind, Charles,’ said Caroline; ‘we’ll ask the Uncle to take us
to-morrow.’
‘They’re off to-morrow,’ said Rupert; ‘that’s why I went to-day.’ He
added something bitter and almost unbearable about a parcel of
kids.
But the circus, as it turned out, was not off next day. An accident
had happened. Something was missing, and the circus could not go
on its travels till that something was found.

‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Harriet, when she told them about it
at breakfast; ‘but they’ve lost something they set store by. Some
says it’s an improving seal, and others says it’s a boar-conjector-
snake, and Poad told my gentleman friend it was the white-eyed
Kaffir made a bolt for freedom and India’s coral strand, where he
was stole from when a babe; but I don’t know the rights of it. They
sent for Poad. My gentleman friend’ll know all about it next time I
see him.’
‘When shall you see him again?’ Charles asked.
‘I can see him whenever I’ve a mind,’ said Harriet proudly. ‘I’m
not one of those as has to run after their gentlemen friends.’
‘I do wonder what it is,’ Charlotte said. ‘Do see your friend as
soon as you can and ask him, won’t you, Harriet? I do hope it’s not
snakes or bears. You’ll be sure to tell us directly you know, won’t
you?’
‘Sure,’ said Harriet.
It was from William, however, that they heard what it was that
the circus had really lost.
‘It’s a tame Le-o-pard,’ said William; ‘him with the spots that you
can’t change, and the long tail.’
‘I know,’ said Charlotte; ‘there’s a leopard’s skin in the drawing-
room. Very spotty they are. And fierce, too, I believe. Oh, William! I
do hope it won’t come this way.’
‘There’s something about it in the book,’ said Caroline, who, as
usual, had her magic books under her arm. She found the place and
read, ‘Leopard’s-bane, its government and virtues’—quite a long
piece. When she had done, William said:
‘Thank you very much; quite pretty, ain’t it?’ And Rupert said it
was all nonsense.

‘But it won’t come this way, will it?’ Charlotte repeated.
‘It’s a tame one,’ said William, grinning. ‘At least that’s the
character it’s got from its last place. But it won’t be any too tame for
Poad, I expect. I hear he’s got the job of catching of it. And serve
him right too.’
‘Oh, why?’ asked Charlotte.
‘Because,’ said William shortly, and was told not to be cross about
nothing.
‘’Tain’t nothing, then,’ he said; ‘’twas the way he acted about my
dog license, and the dog only two months over puppy-age, when no
license is taken nor yet asked.’
‘I don’t fancy Poad much myself,’ said Rupert; ‘he needn’t have
been so keen about catching me.’
‘Now that’s where you’re wrong,’ said William. ‘Hunting of you,
that was no more than Poad’s duty; and if he set about it like a
jackape, well, some is born silly and can’t help it, and why blame the
man? But the dog, ’e worn’t Poad’s duty. He exceeded about the
dog, Poad did, and I don’t bear malice; but I’ll be even with him yet
about that dog.’
‘How?’ asked Rupert.
‘Oh, I’ll find a way,’ said William carelessly. ‘No hurry. Acts like that
act what Poad did about my Pincher, they always come home to
roost—them acts do. Now then, Miss Charlotte, leave that saddle
soap alone, and get along into the garden. The gates ’as been
locked since eight this morning, and you’re to go through the secret
way to-day, and not to go outside the garden because of that old
speckled Le-o-pard.’
The three C.’s went, but Rupert lingered beside William, fingering
the bright buckles of the harness and passing the smooth reins
slowly through his fingers.

For some time the three C.’s were very busy in the garden,
gathering heart-shaped green leaves and golden fragile daisy-like
flowers.
‘I never thought,’ said Caroline earnestly, opening the brown book
and sitting down on the terrace steps with a sheaf of green and
yellow beside her, ‘that we should need it when I read about it in the
Language Of, and in the medicine book. Look here, it says: “It is
under Apollo, and the flowers and leaves thereof all leopards and
their kind do fear and abhor. Wherefore if it be ſtrewn in the paths
theſe fearful beaſts do frequent, they may not paſs, but ſhall turn
again and go each to his own place in all meekneſs and ſubmiſsion.
Indeed, it hath been held by the ancients, aye and by philoſophers
of our own times, that in this herb lieth a charm to turn to water the
hearts of theſe furious ſpotted great cats, and to looſe the ſtrings of
their tongues, ſo that they ſpeak in the ſpeech of men, uttering
ſtrange things and very wondrous. But of this the author cannot
ſpeak certainly, ſince the Leopard is not native to this land unleſs it
be in Northumberland and Wales where all wild things might well be
hidden.”’
‘So, you see,’ said Caroline.
But Charlotte said it was all very well, only how were they to get
the bane to the leopard?
‘It isn’t as if we were allowed free,’ she pointed out. ‘I wish they
hadn’t been so careful. The leopard would never have hurt us as
long as we carried the bane, and we could have surrounded it, like
snakes, with ash leaves, and it would have had to surrender.’
‘And perhaps it would have talked to us and followed us like tame
fawns,’ suggested Charlotte; ‘or Una; only hers was a lion.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Charles; ‘you know you’d have been afraid.’
‘I shouldn’t,’ said Charlotte.
‘You would,’ said Charles.

‘I shouldn’t.’
‘You would.’
‘I shouldn’t.’
‘You would.’
‘And now you’re both exactly like Rupert,’ said Caroline; ‘and the
leopard wandering about unbaned while you’re wrangling. You’re like
Nero and Rome.’
Twenty minutes had passed before peace was restored, and the
leopard’s-bane lay drooping in the sun, the delicate gold and green
heaps of it growing flatter and flatter.
‘Well, then,’ said Charles suddenly, ‘if you’re not afraid, let’s go.
No one’s forbidden us to, except William.’
‘I will if you will,’ said Charlotte, turning red.
‘So will I,’ said Caroline, turning pale.
‘Rupert said it was nonsense about the leopard’s-bane when you
read it this morning.’
‘That doesn’t make it nonsense,’ said Charlotte sharply.
‘But suppose you meet it?’
‘You can’t—if you keep to the road. Leopards get into trees. They
never walk about in roads like elephants do. Not even when the
circus man is moving. It’s serious what we’re going to do,’ said
Caroline; ‘and what’ll people say about it, depends how it turns out.
If we parrylise the leopard and save the village, we shall be heroines
like——’
(‘And heroes,’ said Charles.)
‘Like Joan of Arc, and Philippa who sucked the poison out of the
burgesses’ keys at Calais.’

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