visible fire with an
unseen poker--the cook seemed to be putting an unseen dish into an
invisible oven.

"Run along with you, do," she said; "I'm behindhand as it is. You won't
get no dinner if you come a-hindering of me like this. Come, off you
goes, or I'll pin a discloth to some of your tails."

"You're _sure_ the Lamb's all right?" asked Jane anxiously.

"Right as ninepence, if you don't come unsettling of him. I thought
you'd like to be rid of him for to-day; but take him, if you want him,
for gracious' sake."

"No, no," they said, and hastened away. They would have to defend the
castle presently, and the Lamb was safer even suspended in mid air in an
invisible kitchen than in the guard-room of the besieged castle. They
went through the first doorway they came to, and sat down helplessly on
a wooden bench that ran along the room inside.

"How awful!" said Anthea and Jane together; and Jane added, "I feel as
if I was in a lunatic asylum."

"What does it mean?" Anthea said. "It's creepy; I don't like it. I wish
we'd wished for something plain--a rocking-horse, or a donkey, or
something."

"It's no use wishing _now_," said Robert bitterly; and Cyril said--

"Do be quiet; I want to think."

He buried his face in his hands, and the others looked about them. They
were in a long room with an arched roof. There were wooden tables along
it, and one across at the end of the room, on a sort of raised platform.
The room was very dim and dark. The floor was strewn with dry things
like sticks, and they did not smell nice.

Cyril sat up suddenly and said--

"Look here--it's all right. I think it's like this. You know, we wished
that the servants shouldn't notice any difference when we got wishes.
And nothing happens to the Lamb unless we specially wish it to. So of
course they don't notice the castle or anything. But then the castle is
on the same place where our house was--is, I mean--and the servants have
to go on being in the house, or else they _would_ notice. But you can't
have a castle mixed up with our house--and so _we_ can't see the house,
because we see the castle; and they can't see the castle, because they
go on seeing the house; and so"--

"Oh, _don't_," said Jane; "you make my head go all swimmy, like being on
a roundabout. It doesn't matter! Only, I hope we shall be able to see
our dinner, that's all--because if it's invisible it'll be unfeelable as
well, and then we can't eat it! I _know_ it will, b