The Book People
Amazon caught up one of the foe and, disregarding her screaming and scratching, carried her back to the book where she belonged, pushed her in, and shut the door.
Boadicea carried Mrs. Markham and her brown silk under one bare, braceleted arm as though she had been a naughty child. Joan of Arc made herself responsible for Aunt Fortune, and the Queen of the Amazons made nothing of picking up Miss Murdstone, beads and all, and carrying her in her arms like a baby. Torfrida's was the hardest task. She had, from the beginning, singled out Alftruda, her old and bitter enemy, and the fight between them was a fierce one, though it was but a battle of looks. Yet before long the fire in Torfrida's great dark eyes seemed to scorch her adversary, she shrank before it, and shrank and shrank till at last she turned and crept back to her book and went in of her own accord, and Torfrida shut the door.
"But" said Mavis, who had followed her, "don't you live in the same book?"
Torfrida smiled.
"Not quite," she said. "That would be impossible. I live in a different edition, where only the Nice People are alive. In hers it is the nasty ones."
"And where is Hereward?" Cathay asked, before Mavis could stop her. "I do love him, don't you?"
"Yes," said Torfrida, "I love him. But he is not alive in the book where I live. But he will be—he will be."
And smiling and sighing, she opened her book and went into it, and the children went slowly back to the Palace. The fight was over, the Book People had gone back into their books, and it was almost as though they had never left them—not quite, for the children had seen the faces of the heroes, and the books where these lived could never again now be the same to them. All books,
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