That's not a concern. What is a concern is that you two are spending a lot of time on this magic stuff, at the expense of everything else. That's all you do. You go out in the morning, you come back worn out, you barely have energy to speak to us sometimes. What about your childhood?" "What about it?" Nita said, in some slight annoyance. Her experience of most of her childhood so far had been that it varied between painful and boring. Wizardry might be painful occasionally, but it was never boring. 'Mum – you don't understand. This isn't something that you can just turn off. You take the Wizard's Oath for life." "Oh, honey!" her mother said in some distress, and dropped a spoon. She picked it up, wiping it off. 'Why do you have to make this harder than it. Never mind. Look. Dad thinks it would be a good idea if you went to visit your Aunt Annie in Ireland for a month or so, until school starts again." "Ireland!" 'Well, yes. She's been inviting us over there for a while now. We can't go with you, of course –we've had our holiday for this year, and Dad has to be at work. He can't take any more time off. But you could certainly go. School doesn't start until September the ninth. That would give you a good month and a half now." There was going to be nothing good about it, as far as Nita was concerned. The best part of the summer, the best weather, the leisure time that she had been looking forward to using working with Kit. . . "Mum," Nita said, changing tack, "how are you going to afford this?" "Honey, you leave that to your dad and me to handle. Right now we're more concerned with doing the right thing for you. And for Kit." "Oh, you've been talking to his parents, have you?" "No, we haven't. I think they're going to have to sort things out with Kit in their own way: I wouldn't presume to dictate to them. But we want you to go to Ireland for six weeks or so and take a breather.