Mrs. Hackworth smiled dutifully, and not for very long.

"Little Fiona seems to handle her father's absence well."

"Oh, but to Fiona, he has never been gone," Mrs. Hackworth said. "It is the book, you see, that ractive book. When John gave it to her, just before he departed, he said that it was magic, and that he would talk to her through it. I know it's nonsense, of course, but she really believes that whenever she opens that book, her father reads her a story and even plays with her in an imaginary world, so that she hasn't really missed him at all. I haven't the heart to tell her that it's nothing more than a computerized media programme."

"I am inclined to believe that, in this case, keeping her in ignorance is a very wise policy," Finkle-McGraw said.

"It has served her well thus far. But as time goes on, she is more and more flighty and less disposed to concentrate on her schoolwork. She lives in a fantasy and is happy there. But when she learns that the fantasy is just that, I fear it will not go well for her."

"She is hardly the first young lady to display signs of a vivid imagination," the Equity Lord said. "Sooner or later they seem to turn out all right."

The three little explorers, and their two adult outriders, returned to the great house shortly. Lord Finkle-McGraw's desolate private moor was as alienated from the tastes of little girls as single malt whiskey, Gothic architecture, muted colors, and Bruckner symphonies. Once they had reached it and found that it was not equipped with pink unicorns, cotton candy vendors, teen idol bands, or fluorescent green water slides, they lost interest and began to gravitate toward the house-which in and of itself was far from Disneyland, but in which a practiced and assertive user like Elizabeth could find a few consolatory nuggets, such as a full-time kitchen staff, trained in (among many other, completely useless skills) the preparation of hot chocolate.

Having come as close to the subject of John Percival Hackworth's disappearance as they dared, and careened past it with no damage except some hot faces and watery eyes, Lord Finkle-McGraw and Mrs. Hackworth had withdrawn, by mutual consent, to cooler subjects. The girls would come inside to drink some hot chocolate, and then it would be time for the guests to repair to the quarters assigned them for the day, where they could freshen up and dress for the main event: dinner.

"I should be pleased to look after the other little girl-Nell-– until the dinner hour," Mrs. Hackworth said. "I noticed that the gentleman who brought her round this morning has not returned from the hunt."

The Equity Lord chuckled as he imagined General Moore trying to help a little girl dress for dinner. He was graceful enough to know his limits, and so he was spending the day shooting on the remoter stretches of the estate. "Little Nell has a talent for looking after herself and may not need or wish to accept your most generous offer. But she might enjoy spending the interim with Fiona."

"Forgive me, Your Grace, but I am startled that you would consider leaving a child of her age unattended for most of the afternoon."

"She would not view it in that way, I assure you, for the same reason that little Fiona does not think of her father as ever having left your house."

The expression that passed over Mrs. Hackworth's face as she heard this statement suggested less than perfect comprehension. But before she could explain to her host the error of his ways, they were interrupted by the sound of a shrill and bitter conflict making its way down the hall toward them. The door swung open halfway, and Colin Finkle-McGraw appeared. His face was still ruddy from the wind on the moor, and it bore a forced grin that was not terribly distant from a smirk; though his brow knit up periodically as Elizabeth emitted an especially piercing shriek of anger. In one hand he held a copy of the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer. Behind him, Mrs. Finkle-McGraw could be seen holding Elizabeth by the wrist in a grip that recalled the blacksmith's tongs holding a dangerously hot ingot ready for smiting; and the radiant glow of the little girl's face perfected that analogy. She had bent down so that her face was level with Elizabeth's and was hissing something to her in a low and reproaching tone.

"Sorry, Father," the younger Finkle-McGraw said in a voice slathered with not very convincing synthetic good humor. "Nap time, obviously." He nodded to the other. "Mrs. Hackworth." Then his eyes returned to his father's face and followed the Equity Lord's gaze downward to the book. "She was rude to the servants, Father, and so we have confiscated the book for the rest of the afternoon. It's the only punishment that seems to sink in-we employ it with some frequency."

"Then perhaps it is not sinking in as well as you suppose," Lord Finkle-McGraw said, looking sad and sounding bemused. Colin Finkle-McGraw chose to interpret this remark as a witticism targeted primarily at Elizabeth-but then, parents of small children must perforce have an entirely different sense of irony than unimpaired humankind.

"We can't let her spend her life between the covers of your magical book, Father, It is like a little interactive empire, with Elizabeth the empress, issuing all sorts of perfectly bloodcurdling decrees to her obedient subjects. It's important to bring her back to reality from time to time, so that she can get some perspective."

"Perspective. Very well, I shall look forward to seeing you and Elizabeth, with her new perspective, at dinner."

"Good afternoon, Father. Mrs. Hackworth," the younger man said, and closed the door, a heavy masterpiece of the woodcarver's art and a fairly effective decibel absorbant.

Gwendolyn Hackworth now saw something in Lord Finkle-McGraw's face that made her want to leave the room. After speeding through the obligatory pleasantries, she did. She collected Fiona from the chimneycorner where she was cherishing the dregs of her hot chocolate. Nell was there too, reading her copy of the Primer, and Gwendolyn was startled to see that she had not touched her drink at all.

"What is this?" she exclaimed in what she took to be an appropriately sugary voice. "A little girl who doesn't like hot chocolate?"

Nell was deeply absorbed in her book, and for a moment Gwendolyn thought that her words had gone unheard. But a few beats later it became evident that the child was merely postponing her response until she reached the end of a chapter. Then she raised her eyes slowly from the page of the book. Nell was a reasonably attractive girl in the way that almost all girls are before immoderate tides of hormones start to make different parts of their faces grow out of proportion to others; she had light brown eyes, glowing orange in the light of the fire, with a kind of feral slant to them. Gwendolyn found it difficult to break her gaze; she felt like a captured butterfly staring up through a magnifying lens into the calm, keen eye of the naturalist.

"Chocolate is fine," Nell said. "The question is, do I need it."

There was a rather long pause in the conversation as Gwendolyn groped for something to say. Nell did not seem to be awaiting a response; she had delivered her opinion and was done with it.

"Well," Gwendolyn finally said, "if you should decide that there is anything you do need, please know that I would be happy to assist you."

"Your offer is most kind. I am in your debt, Mrs. Hackworth," Nell said. She said it perfectly, like a princess in a book.

"Very well. Good afternoon," Gwendolyn said. She took Fiona's hand and led her upstairs. Fiona dawdled in a way that was almost perfectly calculated to annoy, and responded to her mother's questions only with nods and shakes of the head, because, as always, her mind was elsewhere. Once they had reached their temporary quarters in the guest wing, Gwendolyn got Fiona settled into bed for a nap, then sat down at an escritoire to work her way through some pending correspondence. But now Mrs. Hackworth found that her own mind was elsewhere, as she pondered these three very strange girls-the three smartest little girls in Miss Matheson's Academy-each with her very strange relationship with her Primer. Her gaze drifted away from the sheets of mediatronic paper scattered about the escritoire, out the window, and across the moor, where a gentle shower had begun to fall. She devoted the better part of an hour to worrying about girls and Primers.