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 cook seemed to be putting an unseen dish into an invisible oven.

"Run along with you, do," she said; "I'm behindhand as it is. You won't get no dinner if you come a-hindering of me like this. Come, off you goes, or I'll pin a discloth to some of your tails."

"You're sure the Lamb's all right?" asked Jane anxiously.

"Right as ninepence, if you don't come unsettling of him. I thought you'd like to be rid of him for to-day; but take him, if you want him, for gracious' sake."

"No, no," they said, and hastened away. They would have to defend the castle presently, and the Lamb was safer even suspended in mid air in an invisible kitchen than in the guard-room of the besieged castle. They went through the first doorway they came to, and sat down helplessly on a wooden bench that ran along the room inside.

"How awful!" said Anthea and Jane together; and Jane added, "I feel as if I was in a lunatic asylum."