‘Topaz!’ I called out from my room.

‘Yes – topaz! What a clever boy you are!’ said the Princess.

‘No, no, don’t you write it in – let me –’ They were squabbling, the bedding rustled, paper scrunched . . . ‘Eeek –!’ Billie squealed. Something tore.

‘Silly noodle!’ said the Princess. ‘Right – now we’ll copy it out again on this bit of paper . . . Oh-oh, something’s wrong! We crossed out some wrong syllables . . .’

‘Doctor Parchment solves puzzles without the aid of a pencil!’ I called out. They weren’t even listening. They were probably hard at work. Pause.

I heard the Princess, ‘Puff . . . Did you ever see anything like it? What’s Puff?’

‘Breath!’ said Billie and I at the same time. It was like a secret understanding between us. They rustled some more.

‘That’s completely wrong! The essence of all sensory perception – sensory perception . . .’ Now they were obviously at their wits’ ends, because they had both gone very quiet. I couldn’t hear anything.

‘I don’t know . . .’ said the Princess. ‘It’s bound to be a misprint!’

‘You don’t get misprints in crossword puzzles!’ I called.

‘You keep out of it, clever-dick!’

‘Let me . . .’

‘Give it here . . .’

‘Do you have any idea?’

Both together: ‘We don’t know.’

‘You need some adult assistance,’ I said. ‘Let me have a crack at it.’ And I got up and went in.

I took a chair and sat down near the Princess. For an instant, the chair had hesitated in my hand; it had wanted to go to Billie’s side.

‘Right – let’s see then!’ I read it, dropped the paper, picked it up again, started again on a fresh piece of paper. They were looking at me mockingly. ‘Well?’

‘It’s not that easy!’

‘He can’t do it either!’ said Billie.

‘Let’s have a go at the red wine first!’ I said, and I did.

‘That’s very nice,’ said the Princess. ‘Wine-stains are every housewife’s favorite, particularly on sheets. What a pig!’ She was talking about me!

‘You can wash them out,’ I grumbled. ‘Salt-stains are removed by pouring red wine over them,’ proclaimed the Princess. They both lay on their tummies and pored over their newspaper. They got nowhere. Billie had swept her hair back off her forehead and looked like a baby. Like a picture of Billie as a baby. What a round face she had.

‘Ant . . . Antlers!’ shouted Billie. ‘Antlers for Hunting-trophies! There, we hadn’t got that one before! But where does Chrys-chrys . . .’

‘Me too!’ Now I was half-lying on the bed with the Princess, concentrating hard on the pencil-scribbles.

‘Chrysoprase!’ I said suddenly. ‘Chrysoprase! Give it to me!’ There was an admiring silence from the two of them, and I basked in my cultivated vocabulary. We listened. A gust of wind rattled the window-panes, and the rain drummed in the night outside.