g up from the bowl of white floating cubes, 'do
you think you're getting to like me any better?'

'_No_,' said Philip, brief and stern like the skipper in the song.

'I wish you would,' said Lucy.

'Well, I can't,' said Philip; 'but I do want to say one thing. I'm sorry
I bunked and left you. And I did come back.'

'I know you did,' said Lucy.

'I came back to fetch you,' said Philip, 'and now we'd better get along
home.'

'You've got to do seven deeds of power before you can get home,' said
Lucy.

'Oh! I remember, Perrin told me,' said he.

'Well,' Lucy went on, 'that'll take ages. No one can go out of this
place _twice_ unless he's a King-Deliverer. You've gone out
_once_--without _me_. Before you can go again you've got to do seven
noble deeds.'

'I killed the dragon,' said Philip, modestly proud.

'That's only one,' she said; 'there are six more.' And she ate bread and
milk with firmness.

'Do you like this adventure?' he asked abruptly.

'It's more interesting than anything that ever happened to me,' she
said. 'If you were nice I should like it awfully. But as it is----'

'I'm sorry you don't think I'm nice,' said he.

'Well, what do _you_ think?' she said.

Philip reflected. He did not want not to be nice. None of us do. Though
you might not think it to see how some of us behave. True politeness, he
remembered having been told, consists in showing an interest in other
people's affairs.

'Tell me,' he said, very much wishing to be polite and nice. 'Tell me
what happened after I--after I--after you didn't come down the ladder
with me.'

'Alone and deserted,' Lucy answered promptly, 'my sworn friend having
hooked it and left me, I fell down, and both my hands were full of
gravel, and the fierce soldiery surrounded me.'

'I thought you were coming just behind me,' said Philip, frowning.

'Well, I wasn't.'

'And then.'

'Well, then---- You _were_ silly not to stay. They surrounded me--the
soldiers, I mean--and the captain said, "Tell me the truth. Are you a
Destroyer or a Deliverer?" So, of course, I said I wasn't a destroyer,
whatever I was; and then they took me to the palace and said I could be
a Princess till the Deliverer King turned up. They said,' she giggled
gaily, 'that my hair was the hair of a Deliverer and not of a Destroyer,
and I've been most awfully happy ever since. Have you?'

'No,' said Philip, remembering the miserable feeling of having been a
coward and a sneak that had