Sarah Jane Smith, swinging her tiny purse by its strap, entered the Doctor’s laboratory to find the tall, white-haired scientist waiting for her, his feet propped up on the edge of the workbench, his body perched precariously on a stool that he kept tipped back.

“You look very self satisfied,” she said at once. “Like the cat who got the cream.”

“I am self satisfied,” he told her. His smugness was almost comical. “I am extremely self satisfied.”

She came around the stool where he sat with his long legs stretched to the table edge.

“Found a new planet?” she asked. “No,” and his voice was patient.

“Cured a disease?”

“Cured half a dozen before lunch. You missed it.”

“Phhh,” she said. She looked around the cluttered lab and cast a cautious eye at his TARDIS. Perhaps, she thought, he had rung her up to suggest a trip abroad. Out into time and space. She wasn’t ready for this. But at the moment he seemed perfectly content to sit tipped back on that stool. And the tall blue police box that was his time machine was silent and locked up.

She came around him on the other side and tossed her purse onto the workbench. “Well you’d better tell me because a busy journalist like me takes precious little interest in asking questions of anybody with that smug look on his face.”

For answer, he thrust a hand into his velvet smoking jacket and withdrew two small white envelopes. He held them up in triumph.

“What are those then?” she asked.

He flapped them back and forth, and a rich perfume touched her senses. For a moment it filled her with both anticipatory hunger and sudden realization. Her face lit up as she exclaimed, “No kidding! Invitations to the Chocolate House tour!”

“Those of us who have been invited choose to call it the Royalty House Tour,” he told her. “As that is what it’s properly called. And it’s not just the tour, Sarah Jane. It’s an invitation and two passes for me and my chosen companion to spend a weekend there, getting to know the place.”

She came at him so fast that he nearly toppled backwards off the tipped stool.

“Chose me!” she exclaimed. “Oh I’d love to go!” For a moment her anguish at thinking he might really be teasing her flashed across her face with genuine pain. “You don’t want to take the Brigadier or some chum from UNIT---“

“Chum from UNIT? Chum?” he asked.

“So you ought to take me!”

He swung his legs down and deliberately stood. When he did get up, he was a foot taller than she. “Of course I ought to take you, but the understanding is that we are a couple; a pair---“

“Well that’s all right, isn’t it? We’ll go as father and daughter.”

“Father and daughter?”

“Please take me with you! I’m dying to go!”

At her earnestness, his lined face softened. “Well of course I’ll take you with me. That’s why I called you here, to ask you to come along.”

“Oh Doctor, that’s wonderful! Thank you! I’m dying to take one of their tours!” She was so happy that she seized his hand in both of hers. “Oh maybe I can do a story on it.”

His eyes twinkled at her delight, but as she left him to fill the electric kettle for tea, his face took on a faintly quizzical expression.

“And just think,” she said as she opened the tap at the lab sink. “All that free chocolate. I’ve heard that you can have as much as you like while you’re there---“

“You know, I cannot understand the incredibly addictive draw that chocolate has on even the most sensible of young women,” he said.

“Oh I love chocolate. Especially well made chocolates, and they’re ever so expensive---“

“Yes, but why?” He stepped after her to get the mugs from the shelf over the sink. “What’s the attraction?”

She turned and shot him a puzzled look of her own. “It tastes so good! What else?”

He gave a slight shake of his head and started looking for the canister of tea. “I’ve never had time to investigate it, but there’s a magnetic draw of chocolate for human females. Perhaps I’ll look into it before we make the trip. Or perhaps while we’re there. It’s this weekend. That’s the best I could do. Hope you can get away.”

“I’ll make a point of getting away for this. You don’t snag a pass to the Chocolate House more than once in a lifetime!”

“Royalty house!” he exclaimed.
END