They had finished the play just before lunch, and were soon sitting in the nursery, eating together, as it was too rainy to go outside.
“I think we both acted very well,” she said, “You remembered all your lines and played all three parts to perfection.”
“It was almost like the book, but I was too big,” said Pixi.
“Too big for what?”
“Too big to be eaten like the pixies in the story. You couldn’t fit me into your mouth.”
“Well that’s nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, it wouldn’t have been merely acting if I’d actually eaten you.”
He wanted to know something else, and had been leading up to surreptitiously prying it out of her.
“I hope I didn’t taste awful,” he said.
“Well I didn’t want to overdo a simple play. So I only tasted you once, but it was nice,” said Mrs Parkin, showing a slight shyness at discussing such subject matter, “But you needn’t think too much about it. You’re not a pixie, and you won’t need to be eaten.”
She had been somewhat ambiguous about what she would have done, if he had been small enough to gobble whole. Still he had learned that Mrs Parkin liked the taste of him. This both warmed his heart and excited him immensely. In the weeks ahead, he took care not to keep talking about the play, lest she begin to suspect his motives.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On the day of his seventh birthday, Mrs Parkin took Pixi out for a walk in the surrounding area and a picnic lunch.
“You’re a nice boy,” she said, stroking his hair as they sat on the picnic rug, “I need to lie down for a while. I didn’t realise that the picnic basket would be so heavy.”
She lay down beside him. He stroked her hair and said, “You’re a nice governess, Mrs Parkin, the best that any boy could hope for.”
“Thank you, Pixi,” she said, “Would you like to go for a little walk, while I rest?”
“Yes,” said Pixi.
“Don’t wander off too far. Just stay in the quiet areas we’ve explored just before lunch,” she said.
Pixi wandered for a while until he came to a group of ferns and bushes that looked as though it would serve to be an excellent cubby hole. He quickly crawled in and found himself falling slowly down the Robert Hole.
Pixi reached the bottom and came out in the strange curved room that Alice and the White Robert had discovered all those chapters ago. He saw a piece of cake on a table, with the words ‘EAT ME’ on it in icing. He had already enjoyed some cake for his birthday picnic, and had wished there’d been more. He snatched up the piece of cake, ate it and then remembered that he had been asked not to wander off too far.
“I’d better be getting back,” he thought, “I hope I can climb back up that hole.”
Suddenly Pixi Smith shrank to tiny size.
“Oh my goodness!” he thought, “Now I’ll never be able to climb up. How will I get back to Mrs Parkin?”
He ran back to the bottom of the hole and looked up. Now he simply couldn’t see the top. He felt lighter than air in that spot. He found that his feet left the ground, and he began floating upwards, at the same speed that he had floated down before. Higher and higher he went, until he came to the top of the hole and out into this more secluded part of England again. It was only then, that he noticed that he had grown back to normal size while floating upwards.
He ran back to the rug and saw that Mrs Parkin was still fast asleep. He sat down beside her and looked at her mouth, recalling the most recent views he had had of her eating her lunch. He wondered if he could persuade her to go with him to that strange place he had just visited, a place where –that was it! – he could now be eaten by her, assuming that his size would diminish again down there.
To his surprise, he shrank to tiny size again. He walked over and looked at Mrs Parkin’s face, standing just beside it. Her mouth was right in front of him. She had only to open it and he would fit in there. Yet she had not given him any firm clues as to whether or not the idea of eating him appealed to her. He saw her stirring and began to panic.