Chapter 11

The learning of magic was by no means easy. The days went by with Chris's mornings and afternoons spent in Mr. Wicker's study, reading books too heavy for him to lift, learning incantations by heart, and how to blend simple formulae over the fire. He had told his master at once about Simon Gosler, his horde of money and his hiding places for it. Mr. Wicker though interested and attentive, gave Chris the impression that what he had been told was not new to him. At times Chris was allowed to run about the large vegetable garden and climb the orchard trees, but he was told that the moment had not yet come when he could wander at will in early Georgetown.

Chris had tried it once, rebellious and bored at the now familiar ground, but it was as if an invisible wall kept him in the confines of Mr. Wicker's land, a slippery glass wall he could feel but not see, and in which he could discover no chink in which to put his toe to find the height of it. So there was nothing left to do but to work as fast and as well as he could. "There are rumors," Mr. Wicker had told him quietly, too quietly, "that Claggett Chew is preparing his ship, the _Venture_, for a voyage East. There is much activity about his ship, and he is laying in stores, so I am informed. We must get forward with all haste, for his ship is a fast one--faster than the _Mirabelle_."

Chris therefore threw himself into all the preliminaries of his task. His head swam when he laid it on his pillow at night, and Becky Boozer would stand with her hands on her barrel-sized hips, shaking her hat until its plumes and roses waved madly, over "her boy's" shadowed eyes and weary air.

For Chris was now as accepted a member of the household as Mr. Wicker himself, and had it not been for the robust guffaws of Ned Cilley, and the ministrations of the now devoted Becky, Chris's days would have been tedious indeed.

One afternoon when he returned, after a rest, to Mr. Wicker's study, he saw that there was something new in the room. A bowl with a goldfish in it stood on the table, but Mr. Wicker was not to be seen. Now, however, Chris was not the boy he had been a few weeks before. He went straight to the bowl and addressed the fish.

"Sir," he said to the goldfish, "I am here. What shall I do first?"

The goldfish might almost have been said to have changed its expression and smiled, before, brushing a drop of water from his sleeve, Mr. Wicker stood beside the table smiling.

"How you have improved, my boy!" he exclaimed. "It is now time for you to try, and this is as good a change as any."

All at once, at the imminent prospect of really changing himself into some other form, Chris became frightened and his hands grew cold.

"Oh, sir! Do you really think I know how?" he cried, gazing up into the face of his master. "Suppose I change and can't change back?"

Mr. Wicker shook his head with a smile.

"Never fear, Christopher. You know enough to start, and I feel reasonably sure that you will be quite able to change back again. If you get stuck I can help you. Come now," he said, putting out his hand to touch Chris's shoulder in a reassuring way, "here you go. Remember Incantation Seventy-three, Book One."

Chris stared at the fishbowl, empty now. He remembered Incantation 73,