There was both welcome and unwelcome news at dinner time. Flavian, who greeted Millie with great enthusiasm, insisted on sitting next to her at the table to hear all the details about her term at school, and to regale her with reminiscences about his own days at boarding school. She picked up several good ideas for using magic to get out of games and get the right answers in algebra, and guffawed over Flavian's tales of pranks pulled on the old irascible french master.
"I used to enchant the blackboard to make anything written on it disappear after a minute, you see, so that by the time he'd finished writing the sentences we were to translate, the first part would be gone. We would cry out "but Sir! How does it begin?" Mr Treadle would call us idiots and whirl around with his cane to point at the board, and then whirl back round to us and splutter with angry confusion. Before anyone realised how strong my magic was it didn't occur to them that an upper third boy could do that, so there were many happy lessons where nobody did any french at all! How he ranted and raved and searched frantically behind the blackboard every time, thinking a boy must be hiding somewhere and rubbing the words out on the sly." Flavian's face shone pink with happy remembrance. Suddenly he noticed Christopher staring from his place a few seats along at the long dining table. Christopher's mouth wasn't exactly open in surprise - it would take more than an unexpected lax in moral rectitude on the part of his tutor to make him assume any expression he considered undignified - but he still gave the impression of someone struck dumb. Flavian recovered himself:
"Ah, erm, I mean, it was very wrong of course and I would never advocate such... erm..." He evidently decided it would be easier just to change the subject and continued more brightly "Anyway, Millie, it will be a delight to have you joining our lessons on Monday!"
Millie, always less conscious of her dignity than Christopher, did stare with her mouth open for a moment. "Lessons? But I won't be going to lessons with the others, will I? I mean, that's what I've been doing at school! I've brought home simply tons of books to read!" Millie's long-cherished vision of herself spending the principal part of the holidays curled up in an armchair by the fire and reading for hours on end stared to shrivel away before her eyes. Christopher gave her a look of comradely sympathy as Flavian patiently explained that the basic magic lessons offered at her school would hardly scratch the surface of the sort of magic she had and would need to learn to use and control - which indeed Millie had already discovered. She often used magic lessons to write to Christopher, in fact, because it took only a fraction of her concentration to perform the simple spells the other girls were spending the hour trying, and mostly failing, to master. "Gabriel will give you additional tuition himself in the afternoons on steps the others have covered whilst you were away", Flavian beamed, apparently genuinely unaware that this made things ten times worse, not better. "It's all been perfectly worked out so that you go to boarding school just as the Priestess who entrusted Gabriel with your care commanded, but without seriously neglecting your magical education".
Millie finished her beef stew and carrots somewhat soberly. This was very much not what she had had in mind, but it was hard to argue with the sensible reasons for the arrangement when the only counter argument was an impassioned "but I don't want to!". She sighed. The magical snow was shrouded behind the dining room's heavy velvet curtains, and the sparkling promise of the holidays had gone distinctly flat.
Things looked up at pudding time, when a steaming sticky toffee pudding with custard was set before her - her favourite pudding. When she looked up with pleasure she saw, from far down the chattering table, Rosalie looking at her and smiling. Rosalie picked up here spoon and winked at Millie. Millie felt a warm prickle of pleasure at the knowledge that Rosalie, despite the distraction of her seemingly endlessly complicated wedding preparations, had remembered to order Millie's favourite pudding for her coming home dinner.
Even better, as the children trooped off to the large sitting room next to the school room which has become known by the grown ups as "the playroom", Bernard said excitedly to Christopher "have you told Millie about the circus yet?"
"Don't be a fool", Christopher said in a kindly way. "I haven't had the chance. Millie, there's a circus encamped in a field near Bowbridge and Flavian says we're all to go!"
"The second last show is to be this coming Friday", added Bernard, almost jumping with excitement "and we're all going to go to it before we go home for the holidays! There are lions and elephants and people who do dancing whilst horses run around the ring".
"And clowns!" added Jason. "I might run off and join em." Everyone laughed as Jason attempted a handstand and a forward roll, crashing into the table as his handstand capsized. Millie hastily summoned a cushion which appeared on the floor about a quarter of a second before Jason's head slammed on to it, and then everybody conjured cushions to line the floor whilst they attempted great tumbling feats. Christopher succeeded in standing on his head against the wall, but then discovered he couldn't think of a way to right himself. Elizabeth performed an almost-cartwheel: had it not been for her long skirts and petticoats it would probably have been quite graceful. Bernard's and Millie's efforts could really only be described as jumping and rolling around, but they made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in skill.
Millie was still bubbling with excitement about the prospect of a circus when she went to her water-bottle heated bed that night. She only stopped thinking about it long enough to bask in the glory of having a room to herself, after 11 weeks in a dormitory, and she went to sleep with her mind full of images - none quite accurate, for of course there were no circuses in the world she came from - of big tops and ringmasters and performing seals.
