The Time of the Ghost by Diana Wynne Jones

feathers. Her hand came up holding the old sock. She held it in the air, laughing helplessly. After a bit she managed to speak, in weak, squeaky jerks. “Look—guess what?—think whose?”
    Her sisters rolled about, screaming with mirth. “Julian Addiman’s!”
    Sally watched, perplexed and embarrassed. She could not think why she should want to keep a sock belonging to Julian Addiman, and she was exceedingly hurt that her sisters should think it so funny. She was also a little outraged at the way Cart was going through her private drawer—but not as annoyed as she might have been. After all, if you lived close up against three sisters, this kind of thing was only to be expected. She had done it herself that afternoon. But she hoped Phyllis would come in and catch Cart at it.
    However, nothing happened to stop Cart, who delved and dug and heaved at the numbers of things in the drawer and finally came up triumphantly with two neatly rolled skipping ropes. “Here we are! I knew she still had them!”
    â€œOh, good.” Imogen jumped up and stood on her bed, majestic in her withered loopy pajamas, and took command. “Tie them together. Tightly.” Cart did so. “Now you and Fenella pull on the knot,” Imogen ordered. “Hard. I don’t want to plunge to my death.”
    â€œYou would fly through the air with the greatest of ease,” said Cart.
    â€œI intend to,” Imogen assured her gravely, hitching the wide green trousers up with an air of greatness. “All my life,” she said, “I have dreamed of being a pantomime fairy. I’ve yearned to swoop across the stage in a spangled dress, and now I shall have an inkling of what it will be like. My dreams are about to come true. Now throw one end over the beam.”
    â€œWould you like us to stick silver paper on your pajamas first?” Fenella asked kindly.
    â€œNo,” said Imogen. “This is an imaginative experience.”
    Gloomily Sally watched Cart sling the wooden handle of a skipping rope over the beam and Imogen reach up and pull it down level with her waist. Now she knew what was going on, and it was as idiotic as she had feared. She hoped Phyllis would not come yet. She watched Cart help Imogen to knot the rope round her waist and Fenella taking a firm grip on the wooden handle of the longer end. Cart took a grip on the rope farther up.
    â€œReady?”
    â€œGet on with it,” said Imogen.
    Fenella heaved. Cart threw her head back, braced her great feet, and heaved, too. Slowly, with a lot of creaking, the skipping rope slid over the beam. Imogen’s feet rose from the bed and vanished inside the loopy green legs of her trousers. It seemed that, as Imogen went up, her trousers were going down. Fenella and Cart puffed and staggered. Imogen’s sturdy body went creaking upward again and, quite suddenly and surprisingly, bent in two. Her red, irritated face was now dangling level with the descending gray lace of her trousers. “Ow!” she said.
    â€œYou don’t look very graceful,” Fenella panted.
    â€œStand up in the air,” puffed Cart.
    â€œI can’t!” snapped Imogen. Her legs kicked, in an irritated swirl of green nylon. “Let me down. The rope’s tied too low.”
    Cart and Fenella obediently let go. Imogen descended to her bed in a creaking rush, where she floundered about, imprisoned in loopy trousers. “Help me!” she said. “I want it untied and tied round under my arms instead.”
    No! said Sally. Stop! As Imogen plunged down, it had looked unpleasant, rather like a hanging. She knew what Phyllis would think if she had happened to come in at that moment.
    Of course no one heard. Cart moved the skipping rope up Imogen, taking quantities of flowing green nylon with it, until it was under her arms. There was a bright red crease round Imogen’s square waist where the rope had been. “Are you sure