Lydia had been told that when she attempted to explain all of this to Miss Lambe she had gone into far too much detail, so she tried to edit, she really did, but she still began with, "When I was a little girl, Kitty and I were walking to my Aunt Phillips' one day for our magic lessons, and we found ourselves...trapped. By this terrible presence that wanted to eat us. And Aunt Phillips had told us recently that we should never offer someone a boon, and I didn't know what that was, you see, I just knew that it was very valuable somehow, so I told Wormentongue that if he didn't eat us when I was older I would give him a boon. Which was very silly, I know."

But for the record she had been like seven and a ghost dragon had been about to eat her.

"Well, eventually that came due, of course, and I didn't have anything that would be good enough, so he was going to eat us. But Harriet had heard talk of a Jewel of Propriety in Brighton--she didn't know what it was, either," Lydia felt obligated to say, because it was true. "She thought it was just a magical kind of jewel, like I did--and Wormentongue said that if I brought him the jewel then he wouldn't eat us. Only then I found out that the Jewel was Miss Lambe, so obviously I couldn't do that."