‘Let’s go into the future AGAIN,’ suggested Jane brightly. ‘Perhaps we could remember if it wasn’t such an awful way off.’

The little black-clad London child pulled at Anthea’s sleeve.

So the four children hastily washed their hands and brushed their hair—this was Anthea’s idea—and went up to knock at the door of the ‘poor learned gentleman’, and to ‘bind him with the chains of honour and upright dealing’.

‘I don’t like sacrifices,’ Jane said. So she and Anthea went and talked to the priest, who was no longer lying on his face, but sitting on the top step mopping his forehead with his robe, for it was a hot day.