‘Now we’ll leave it. Please, Murdstone man, let your crimes and your animosity and your aversion be burnt away, and may you lie on beds of roses really as soon as you are changed and amiable. Then when you are truly benevolent, Rupert and us will esteem you, and the hazel is for reconciliation. Now let’s go away and leave the incense to do its healing work, and to-morrow we’ll come and put a fresh rose-bed and burn new incense.’ Thus Caroline. The others agreed, and after having put on the box the label with the Murdstone man’s name, so that Destiny could not pretend to make any mistake as to who the witchcraft was meant for, they went away through green coverts, in Indian file, to build a wigwam in another part of the wood with three hop poles, three red blankets, and their three mackintoshes.
‘I hope Rupert won’t ask a lot of questions about what we’ve been doing to-day,’ said Charles. But Rupert did not ask any. He came home singularly silent, and went to bed early, announcing that he was going to spend the following day, also, with Mr. Penfold.
‘So we needn’t tell him,’ said Charlotte, ‘till the good work is done. I’m glad of that.’
Next day, with a fresh armful of suitable flowers and some more potatoes, fried this time and bearing heavy traces of their close intimacy with the breakfast bacon, the children sought the secret spot where they had laid the waxen image of Mr. Murdstone on its bed of roses. The ashes of the incense bonfire were there, the pedestal was there, the green-covered box was there, half filled with half-faded rose leaves; but the waxen image was gone!
‘He must have fetched it away himself,’ said Charlotte, breaking an awe-struck pause; ‘he must have felt what we were doing and made up his mind to be benevolent. And he fetched it away so that we shouldn’t waste any more good potatoes on him.’
‘I wish he’d do something to show that he’s changed into a Real Good and what sort of Good he’s changed into,’ said Charles. And it certainly is tiresome to work magic and then not to know exactly how it has acted. That their magic had acted, the children were of course quite certain. They had done magic too many times, as you know, to entertain a moment’s doubt as to whether their spells were going to work or not. And the fact that the spell they had worked was not worked exactly as the book said, did not trouble them. For, as Caroline said, ‘If you can do harm to wax people, you can do good to them. More really, I should think. Because one’s wrong and the other’s right.’