He breathed hard on the glass and rubbed it vigorously with his sleeve.
‘Look out!’ said Rosemary in a muffled voice. ‘Don’t wriggle and jiggle like that, it makes you twice as heavy!’
‘Sorry!’ said John. ‘I bet Miss Dibdin’s up to something. I wish I could see inside more clearly. It needs a bit of light and air. Green steam’s a warning. Crumbs! I wonder ...’ he began, but Rosemary interrupted.
Now, with her shoulders hunched, and hair and coat collar round her ears, she could not hear John plainly. Repeating what she thought he had said, she went on crossly: ‘Light as air? I wish you were, till morning comes. You weigh ten tons! That’s better,’ she went on, because suddenly she no longer felt the pressure of John’s feet on her shoulders. She pushed aside the lock of hair a little breeze had blown across her face but when she looked round he was nowhere to be seen.
‘John!’ she called anxiously. ‘John! Where are you?’
A distant voice above her head called out: ‘Help! Help! I’m up here!’
She looked up. John was spread-eagled, arms outstretched, with his back against the glass roof of the platform.
‘What are you doing up there? Don’t be so silly!’ said Rosemary crossly. ‘Come down!’
‘I’m not being silly, it’s you. I can’t come down,’ said John, in an exasperated voice. ‘When you said you wished I was as light as air, I suddenly floated up here. I couldn’t stop myself. How on earth am I going to get down again?’
‘Try kicking with your feet,’ said Rosemary, trying desperately not to panic. ‘You know, like you do when you’re swimming.’
John kicked with his feet. There was a tinkle of broken glass, and Rosemary ducked as a shower of splinters pattered down, missing her by inches.
‘It’s no good,’ said John. ‘I bet it’s that ring again. Are you wearing it?’
Rosemary looked at her hands. The Golden Gew-Gaw was on her forefinger.
‘The beastly thing has done it again,’ said John gloomily. ‘And we know it won’t un-wish its own wishes. I can see its red stone winking from up here, almost as though it’s making fun of us. I daren’t move. If I break another pane of glass in the roof I might float out through the hole and goodness knows where I’d get to. There’s quite a wind. Can’t you hook me down with something?’
‘I’ll see what I can find,’ said Rosemary doubtfully. She looked about her. Sticking out from the bottom of the pile of firewood waiting to be broken up, was a long branch. ‘Hold on,’ she called to John. ‘I think I’ve found something that will do!’
She held it up with both hands directly below him. ‘Bother, it isn’t long enough, but it might be if I stand on something. I shall have to climb on the seat. I can’t help it if it is rotten.’
‘Do be careful!’ called John. But Rosemary was already pushing the ramshackle bench into position. ‘Hurry!’ shouted John. ‘I can see over the fields to Tucket Towers. Miss Dibdin has just come out of the clump of trees, and I think she’s carrying the broom!’
Rosemary climbed on to the bench, holding the branch in one hand, and steadying herself with the other against the window of the waiting room. Using the slats of the back of the seat as a ladder, she mounted on to the wide band of wood at the top.
‘I can’t look ... up!’ she panted. ‘The seat’s too near the wall ... And I can’t ... hold the branch up for long ... it’s too heavy.’
‘And I just can’t reach it. Oh help!’ said John in a despairing voice. ‘Miss Dibdin has got on to her broom and she’s swooping up the field! Hold the branch a bit to the left, Rosie. No, the other way, and a bit higher!’
The branch was so heavy that Rosemary had great difficulty in controlling it at all, and in her agitation, forgetting she might lose her balance if she moved her hand from the window, she clutched the branch with both fists, and, making a desperate attempt to reach John, pushed it as high in the air as she possibly could.
‘Got it!’ cried John triumphantly. ‘Hooray! Now I’ll hold on tight while you pull me down!’
But the sudden thrust of Rosemary’s feet against the top of the bench when she made her final attempt to reach John had been too much for the rotten wood. Just as he spoke, there was a sharp crack, the bench gave a lurch, the back collapsed, and John, Rosemary, branch and broken bench fell in a heap on the platform.
‘Are you all right, John?’ asked Rosemary anxiously.
‘I think I am,’ said John in a muffled voice, for he was at the bottom of the pile.
Rosemary began to stand up, just as a little breeze wafted across the platform, and immediately, still lying down, John started to rise from the ground. ‘Look out!’ he yelled. She was just in time to turn and clutch his flapping arm and pull him down again.
‘You’d better sit on me. That ought to keep me down to earth. You’ve no idea how beastly it was up there. Why did you have to go and wish anything so asinine as me being “light as air”?’
‘Well, you were so beastly heavy,’ said Rosemary, who was wondering which bruise to rub first. ‘Besides, you said it first.’
‘I didn’t say anything of the sort!’ said John crossly. ‘I said Miss Dibdin’s room needed “light and air”. What on earth am I to do? I can’t spend the rest of my life with someone sitting on me!’
‘You might find it useful for something. Get a job as an astronaut or something. They float about, don’t they?’
‘Oh, be your age, Rosie! That’s not because ... Oh, don’t let’s waste time scrapping.’
Rosemary picked up the magic ring, which had fallen from her finger when she fell, and absently slipped it on again, and at once she heard Dumpsie say: ‘Eeh, what a fedaddle! Real interesting it was, seeing you float up in the air, like a bit of burnt paper on the Rubbish Dump! But what a fuss you’re making, when it’s only going to last till morning.’
‘Till morning?’ exclaimed Rosemary. John struggled up to a half-sitting position as she held out her hand so that he could slip his finger through the ring as well.
Dumpsie had started licking her snow-white ruff as calmly as though nothing unusual had happened, but she paused in her licking to say:
‘Well, that’s what she sez,’ waving her bandaged paw at Rosemary. ‘Trust me. Best memory on the Dump. She sez:
“Light as air?
I wish you were
Till morning comes.
You weigh ten tons!” ’
‘A sort of rhyme,’ said Rosemary.
‘A pretty rotten rhyme!’ grumbled John.
‘Then all we’ve got to do is to find some way of keeping you down to earth till tomorrow morning!’ said Rosemary.
‘Well, that’s something, I suppose. But I can’t spend all night lying here with you sitting on top of me! Wait a minute, though. I’ve got an idea. You remember you said something about me being an astronaut? Well, you know how they wear great thick soles to their space suits? Well, if we could make my feet heavy ...’
‘Of course!’ Rosemary broke in. ‘We could stuff your Wellingtons with sand and earth!’
‘And stones in my pockets!’
‘I’ll go and get some!’ she said, and jumped to her feet. John gave a warning shout. She whipped round. A sudden breeze had already wafted him shoulder high. She was just in time to pull him down again.
‘Phew! That was a near thing!’ said John. ‘You’d better pile the broken bits of seat on top of me, and any other old rubbish you can find.’
With a couple of brick-ends, two rusty iron wheels that might have once belonged to a porter’s truck, and a dented fire-bucket with a hole in it, balanced on top of him, as well as the broken seat, Rosemary felt he should be safe.