The Twopenny Spell by E Nesbit

Books at bedtime by Calming Anxiety, the two Penny Spell by E. Nezbit.

Lucy was a very good little girl indeed, and Harry was not so good for a boy, though the grown-ups called him a limb. They both got on very well at school, and were not wholly unloved at home. Perhaps Lucy was a bit of a moth, and Harry was certainly very rude to call her one, but she need not have replied by calling him a beast. I think she did it partly to show him that she was not quite so much of a moth as he thought, and partly because she was naturally annoyed at being buried up to her waist in the ground amongst the goose pre-pushes.

She got into the hole Harry had dug because he said it might make her grow, and then he suddenly shoved down a heap of earth and stamped it around her so that she could not move. She began to cry, then he said moth, and she said beast, and he went away, and left her there, planted there, as the French people say, and she cried more than ever. And she tried to dig herself out and couldn't. And although she was naturally such a gentle child, she would have stamped with rage only she couldn't get her feet out to do it.

Then she screamed, and her uncle Richard came and dug her out and said it was a shame, and gave her tuppence to spend as she liked. So she got nurse to clean the goose pre-ground offer, and when she was cleaned she went out to spend the tuppence. She was allowed to go alone because the shops were only a little way off on the same side of the road, so there was no danger from crossing. "I'll spend every penny of it on myself," said Lucy savagely.

Harry shart have a bit, unless I could think of something he wouldn't like, and then I'd get it, and put it in his bread and milk. She had never felt quite so spiteful before, but then Harry had never been quite so aggravating.

She walked slowly along by the shops, wishing she could think of something that Harry hated. She, herself, hated worms, but Harry didn't mind them. Boys are so hard. Suddenly.

She saw a shop she had never noticed before. The window was quite full of flowers, roses, lilies, violets, pink pansies, everything you can think of growing in a tangled heap as if you had seen them in an old garden in July. He looked for the name over the shop. Instead of being somebody or other, florist, it was Delora Delara, professor of white and black magic.

And in the window was a large card framed and glazed, it said. In chartments done while you wait, every description of charm, carefully and completely worked, strong spells from 50 Yenys to Tappens. We sued all purses, give us a trial, best and cheapest house in the trade, competition defied. Lucy Redness with her thumb in her mouth.

It was Tappens that attracted her. She had never bought a spell, and even a Tappany one would be something new. With some sort of cungering trick I suppose she thought, and I'll never let Harry see how it's done, never, never, never. She went in.

The shop was just as flowery and barry and red rosy and white lilies inside his out, and the colour and the scent almost took her breath away. A thin, dark, unpleasing gentleman suddenly popped out of a bow of flowering night chains and said, "And what can we do for you today, miss?" "And what can we do for you today, miss?" "I want a spell if you please," said Lucy, "the best you can do for Tappens."

"Is that all you've got?" said he. "Yes," said Lucy. "Well, you can't expect much of a spell for that," said he. "Whatever, it's better that I should have the Tappens than that you should.

You see that, of course, now. What would you like?" "We can do you a nice little spell at six pence that'll make it always jam for T." "Oh, and I have another article at eight pence that'll make the grown-ups always think you're good even if you're not, and at half a crown."

"I've only got Tappens?" "Well," he said crossly. "There's only one spell at that price, and that's rarely a tappeny half-pany one, but we'll say Tappens. I can make you like somebody else and somebody else like you."

"Thank you," said Lucy. "I like most people, and everybody likes me." "I don't mean that," he said. "Isn't there someone you'd like to hurt if you're as strong as they are?"

"And they were as weak as you." "Well, yes," said Lucy, in a guilty whisper. "Then hand over your tappens," said the dark gentleman, and it's a bargain. He snatched the coppers, warm from her hand.

"Now," he said. "Tomorrow morning you'll be as strong as Harry, and he'll be little and weak like you. Then you can hurt him as much as you like, and he won't be able to hurt you back." "Oh," said Lucy, "but I'm not sure I want, I think I'd like to change the spell, please."

"No good, six-changed," he said crossly. "You've got what you asked for." "Thank you," said Lucy doubtfully. "But how am I, it's entirely self-adjusting," said nasty Mr. Deloro.

No previous experience required. "Thank you very much," said Lucy. "Good, she was going to say good morning, but it turned into good gracious, because she was so very much astonished. For without a moment's warning, the flower shop had turned into the sweet shop that she knew so well.

A nasty Mr. Deloro had turned into the sweet woman who was asking what she wanted to which of course, as she had just spent her tuppance, the answer was, "Well, nothing." She was already sorry that she had spent it, and in such a way, and she was sorry still when she got home, and Harry owned handsomely that he was sorry he had planted her out, but he really hadn't thought she was such a little idiot, and he was sorry so there." This touched Lucy's heart, and then she felt more than ever that she had not laid out the tuppance to the best advantage. She tried to warn Harry of what was to happen in the morning, but he only said, "Don't yarn.

Bills and miners coming for cricket. You can feel if you like." Lucy didn't like, but it seemed the only thing she could do, to show that she accepted in a proper spirit her brother's apology about the planting out, so she filled it gloomily and ineffectively. Next morning, Harry got up in good time, folded up his night shirt, and made his room so tidy, but the housemaid Nanny had a surprise bit when she went in.

He crept downstairs like a mouse, and learned his lessons before breakfast. Lucy, on the other hand, got up so late that she was only by dressing hastily that she had time to prepare a thoroughly good booby trap before she slid down the bannisters, just as breakfast bell rang. She was first in the room, so she was able to put a little salt in the all the tea cups before anyone else came in. Each tea was made, and Harry was blamed.

Lucy said, "I did it," but no one believed her. They said she was a noble, unselfish sister to try and shield her naughty brother, and Harry burst into floods of tears when she kicked him under the table. She hated herself for doing this, but somehow it seemed impossible to do anything else. She cried, Nanny all the way to school, while Lucy insisted on sliding along all the gutters and dragging Harry after her.

She brought catapult at the toy shop, and a penny worth of tin-tax in the oil shop, both on credit, and as Lucy had never asked for credit before, she got it. At the top of Black Heath village they separated. Harry went back to his school, which is at the other side of the station, and Lucy went on to the high school. The Black Heath High School has a large and beautiful hall, with the staircase leading down into it like a staircase in a picture, and at the other end of the hall is a big statue of a beautiful lady.

The high school mistress call her Venus, but I don't really believe that is her name. Lucy, good, gentle, little Lucy, beloved by her four mistress, and respected by all the school, sat on those steps. I don't know why no one caught her, and used her catapult to throw in pellets you know what they are of course, with her catapult at the beautiful white statue lady, till the Venus, if that is her name, which I doubt, was all over Black spots like a Dalmatian or a carriage dog. Then she went to her classroom and arranged tin-tax with the business end up on all the desks and seats, an act fraught with gloomy returns to blossom around and the Willemina Margare tastrix, another baby trap, addiction re, a pot of water, three pieces of chalk and a handful of torn paper were hastily sketched above the door.

Three other little girls looked on in open mouth depreciation. I do not wish to shock you, so I will not tell you about the complete success of the baby trap, nor of the blood bursty bite between Lucy and Bertha Kauter in a secluded fives court during wreck. Doris spilled men and Gertrude Rock were agitated seconds. It was Lucy's four mistress, the adored Miss Heartelark, who interrupted the fight to the fifth round and led the bloodstained culprits into the hall and up the beautiful picture-like steps to their head mistress's room.

The head of Black Heath Highskill has all the subtle general ship of the head in a Mr. Kipling's Storky. She has also a manner which subdues parents and children alike to what she works in, like the Dyke's hand. Someone less clever would have expelled the luckless Lucy, saddled with her brother's boy nature on such evidence as was now brought forward.

Not so the Black Heath Head. She reserved judgment, the most terrible of all things for a culprit, by the way who thought it over for an hour and a half in the mistress's room, and she privately wrote a note to Lucy's mummer. He was mentally hinting that Lucy was not quite herself, might be sickening for something. Perhaps she had better be kept at home for a day or two.

Lucy went home and on the way up set a bicycle with a little girl on it and then came off best in a heated physical argument with a baker's boy. Harry, meanwhile, had tried his tears and gone to school. He knew his lessons, which was a strange and pleasing thing, and roused in his master's hope to used in to be firmly and thoroughly crushed in the near future. But when he had emerged triumphantly from morning school, he suddenly found his head being punched by Simkin's minor, on the ground that he, Harry, had been showing off.

The punching was scientific and irresistible. Harry indeed did not try to resist. In floods of tears and with uncontrolled emotion, he implored Simkin's minor to let him alone, and not be a brute. Then Simkin's minor kicked him and several other nice little boyfriends of his joined the Glad Throng, and it became quite a kicking party.

So that when Harry and Lucy met at the corner of Wymus Road, his base was almost unrecognizable, while Lucy looked as happy as a king and as proud as a peacock. "What's up?" asked Lucy brisely. Every single boy in the school has kicked me, said Harry in a flat accent. "I wish I was dead."

"So do I," said Lucy cheerily. "I think I'm going to be expelled. I should be quite certain. Only my booby trap came down on Bessie Jane's head instead of Miss Watsonane, and Bessie is no sneak, though she has got a lump like an ostrich's egg on her forehead and soaked through it well, but I think I'm certain to be expelled."

"I wish I was," said Harry, weeping with heartfelt emotion. "I don't know what's the matter with me. I feel all wrong inside. Do you think you can turn into things just by reading them?"

"I feel as if I was in Sanford and Merton, or on one of the books, the kind of the clergyman, then, to set the seaside." "How awfully, beastly," said Lucy. "Now, I feel if I didn't care, Tappance, whether I was expelled or not, and I say, Harry, I feel as if I was much stronger than you. I know I could twist your arm round and then hit it like you did with me the other day, and you wouldn't be able to stop me."

"Of course I couldn't. I can't stop anybody doing anything they want to do. Anybody who likes can hit me and I can't hit them back." He began to cry again, and suddenly Lucy was really sorry.

She had done this. She had degraded her happy brother to a mere milk slot, just because he had happened to plant her out. "I'm leave her planted." Remorse, suddenly, with tooth and claw.

"Look here," she said. "It's all my fault. Because you planted me out, and I wanted to hurt you, but now I don't. I can't make you boy brave again, but I'm sorry, and I'll look after you, Harry old man.

Perhaps you could displace yourself in frocks and long hair and come to the high school. I'd take care nobody bullied you. It isn't nice being bullied, is it?" Harry flung his arms around her.

A thing he would never have done in public street if you'd not been girlish inside at the time. "No, it's hateful," he said, Lucy. "I'm sorry I've been such a pig to you." Lucy put her arms around him, and they kissed each other, though it was broad daylight, and they were walking down the Lee Park.

The same moment, in Charnta, the Laura del Aura ran into them on the pavement. Lucy screamed, and Harry hit out as hard as he could. "Look out," said he, "who are you shoving into?" "Tuck, tuck," said the in Charnta, putting his hatch straight.

"You've bust up your spell, my Lucy child. No spells hold if you go kissing and saying you're sorry. Just keep that in mind for the future, will you?" He vanished in a white cloud of a passing steam motor, and Harry and Lucy were left looking at each other, and Harry was Harry and Lucy was Lucy, to the very marrow of their little backbones.

They shook hands with earnest feeling. "I'm not going to stay." Lucy went to high school and apologized in dust and dashes. "I don't think I was my right, so," she said to the headmistress, "who quite agreed with her, and I will never again." And she never was.

Harry, on the other hand, thrashed Simkin's minor thoroughly and scientifically on the first opportunity, but he did not thrash him extravagantly. He tempered plucked with mercy. For this is the odd thing about the whole story. Ever since the day when the tupney spelled it its work, Harry has been kinder than ever before with Lucy and Lucy braver.

"I can't think why, but so it is." He no longer bullies her, and she is no longer afraid of him. And every time she does something brave for him, or he does something kind for her, they grow more and more alike. So that when they are grown up, he may as well be called Lucius and she, Harriet.

For all the difference there is between them. And all the grownups look on and admire, and think that their incessant drawing has been reduced this improvement, and no one suspects the truth, except the headmistress at a high school, who has gone through the complete course of social magic under a better professor than Mr. Deloro Delara, and that is why she understands everything, and why she did not expel Lucy, but only had managed her. Harry is cock of his school now, and Lucy is in the sixth and a model girl. I wish all headmistresses learned magic at Gerton.