LIVING ALONE

MAGIC COMES TO A COMMITTEE

All six women were there because their country was at war, and because they felt it to be their duty to assist it to remain at war for the present. They were the nucleus of a committee on War Savings, and they were waiting for their Chairman, who was the Mayor of the borough. He was also a grocer.

Five of the members were discussing methods of persuading poor people to save money. The sixth was making spots on the table with a pen.

They were interrupted, not by the expected Mayor, but by a young woman, who came violently in by the street door, rushed into the middle of the room, and got under the table. The members, in surprise, pushed back their chairs and made ladylike noises of protest and inquiry.

All seven listened to thumping silence for several seconds, and then, as no pursuing outcry declared itself, the Stranger arose, without grace, from her hiding-place.

To anybody except a member of a committee it would have been obvious that the Stranger was of the Cinderella type, and bound to turn out a heroine sooner or later. But perception goes out of committees. The more committees you belong to, the less of ordinary life you will understand. When your daily round becomes nothing more than a daily round of committees you might as well be dead.

The Stranger was not pretty; she had a broad, curious face. Her clothes were much too good to throw away. You would have enjoyed giving them to a decayed gentlewoman.

"I stole this bun," she explained frankly. "There is an uninterned German baker after me."

"And why did you steal it?" asked Miss Ford, pronouncing the H in "why" with a haughty and terrifying sound of suction.

"And why could you not afford to buy the bun?" asked Miss Ford. "A big strong girl like you."

You will notice that she had had a good deal of experience in social work.

The Stranger said: "Up till ten o'clock this morning I was of the leisured classes like yourselves. I had a hundred pounds."

Lady Arabel was one of the kindest people in the world, but even she quivered at the suggestion of a common leisure. The sort of clothes the Stranger wore Lady Arabel would have called "too dretful." If one is well dressed one is proud, and may look an angel in the eye. If one is really shabby one is even prouder, one often goes out of one's way to look angels in the eye. But if one wears a squirrel fur "set," and a dyed dress that originally cost two and a half guineas, one is damned.

"You have squandered all that money?" pursued Miss Ford.

"Yes. In ten minutes."

A thrill ran through all six members. Several mouths watered.

"Yes," said the Stranger, "I did. That's how I squandered it."

Miss Ford seemed to be partially drowned by this reply. One could see her wits fighting for air.

But Lady Arabel had not committed herself, and therefore escaped this disaster. "You behaved foolishly," she said. "We are all too dretfully anxious to subscribe what we can spare to the War Loan, of course. But the State does not expect more than that of us."

"God bless it," said the Stranger loudly, so that everybody blushed. "Of course it doesn't. But it is fun, don't you think, when you are giving a present, to exceed expectations?"

The Stranger heard her. Such people do not only hear with their ears. She laughed.

"You shall see the receipt," she said.

Out of her large pocket she dragged several things before she found what she sought. The sixth member noticed several packets labelled MAGIC, which the Stranger handled very carefully. "Frightfully explosive," she said.

"I believe you're drunk," said Miss Ford, as she took the receipt. It really was a War Loan receipt, and the name and address on it were: "Miss Hazeline Snow, The Bindles, Pymley, Gloucestershire."

Lady Arabel smiled in a relieved way. She had not long been a social worker, and had not yet acquired a taste for making fools of the undeserving. "So this is your name and address," she said.

"No," said the Stranger simply.

"This is your name and address," said Lady Arabel more loudly.

"Quite drunk," repeated Miss Ford. She had attended eight committee meetings that week.

"S—s—s—sh, Meta," hissed Lady Arabel. She leaned forward, not smiling, but pleasantly showing her teeth. "You gave a false name and address. My dear, I wonder if I can guess why."

"I dare say you can," admitted the Stranger. "It's such fun, don't you think, to get no thanks? Don't you sometimes amuse yourself by sending postal orders to people whose addresses look pathetic in the telephone book, or by forgetting to take away the parcels you have bought in poor little shops? Or by standing and looking with ostentatious respect at boy scouts on the march, always bearing in mind that these, in their own eyes, are not little boys trotting behind a disguised curate, but British Troops on the Move? Just two pleased eyes in a crowd, just a hundred pounds dropped from heaven into poor Mr. Bonar Law's wistful hand...."

Miss Ford was the ideal member of committee, and a committee, of course, exists for the purpose of damping enthusiasms.

The Stranger's manners were somehow hectic. Directly she heard that laughter the tears came into her eyes. "Didn't you like what I was saying?" she asked. Tears climbed down her cheekbones.

"Oh!" said Miss Ford. "You seem to be—if not drunk—suffering from some form of hysteria."

"Do you think youth is a form of hysteria?" asked the Stranger. "Or hunger? Or magic? Or—"

"How d'you mean—laugh?" asked the Stranger. "I didn't know that noise was called laughing. I thought you were just saying 'Ha—ha.'"

At this moment the Mayor came in. As I told you, he was a grocer, and the Chairman of the committee. He was a bad Chairman, but a good grocer. Grocers generally wear white in the execution of their duty, and this fancy, I think, reflects their pureness of heart. They spend their days among soft substances most beautiful to touch; and sometimes they sell honest-smelling soaps; and sometimes they chop cheeses, and thus reach the glory of the butcher's calling, without its painfulness. Also they handle shining tins, marvellously illustrated.

"May I just finish with this applicant?" she asked in her thin inclusive committee voice, and then added in the direction of the Stranger: "It's no use talking nonsense. We all see through you, you cannot deceive a committee. But to a certain extent we believe your story, and are willing, if the case proves satisfactory, to give you a helping hand. I will take down a few particulars. First your name?"

"M—m," mused the Stranger. "Let me see, you didn't like Hazeline Snow much, did you? What d'you think of Thelma ... Thelma Bennett Watkins?... You know, the Rutlandshire Watkinses, the younger branch——"

Miss Ford balanced her pen helplessly. "But that isn't your real name."

"How d'you mean—real name?" asked the Stranger anxiously. "Won't that do? What about Iris ... Hyde?... You see, the truth is, I was never actually christened ... I was born a conscientious objector, and also——"

"I forget," said the Stranger. "I remember that I put down my trade as Magic, and they registered it on my card as 'Machinist.' Yet Magic, I believe, is a starred profession."

"What is your trade really?" asked Miss Ford.

"I'll show you," replied the Stranger, unbuttoning once more the flap of her pocket.

She wrote a word upon the air with her finger, and made a flourish under the word. So flowery was the flourish that it span her round, right round upon her toes, and she faced her watchers again. The committee jumped, for the blind ran up, and outside the window, at the end of a strange perspective of street, the trees of some far square were as soft as thistledown against a lemon-coloured sky. A sound came up the street....

Oh, let us flee from April! We are but swimmers in seas of words, we members of committees, and to the song of April there are no words. What do we know, and what does London know, after all these years of learning?

Old Mother London crouches, with her face buried in her hands; and she is walled in with her fogs and her loud noises, and over her head are the heavy beams of her dark roof, and she has the barred sun for a skylight, and winds that are but hideous draughts rush under her door. London knows much, and every moment she learns a new thing, but this she shall never learn—that the sun shines all day and the moon all night on the silver tiles of her dark house, and that the young months climb her walls, and run singing in and out between her chimneys....

It was all over. The Mayor was heard cracking his fingers, and whispering "Puss, Puss." The lamp relighted itself. Nobody had known that it was so gifted.

The Mayor said: "Splendid, miss, quite splendid. You'd make a fortune on the stage." His tongue, however, seemed to be talking by itself, without the assistance of the Mayor himself. One could see that he was shaken out of his usual grocerly calm, for his feverish hand was stroking a cat where no cat was.

Black cats are only the showy properties of magic, easily materialised, even by beginners, at will. It must be confusing for such an orderly animal as the cat to exist in this intermittent way, never knowing, so to speak, whether it is there or not there, from one moment to another.

Nobody of course took any notice of her, yet in a way her remark was logical. For that singing Spring that had for a moment trespassed in the room had reminded her of very familiar things, and for a few seconds she had stood upon a beloved hill, and had looked down between beech trees on a far valley, like a promised land; and had seen in the valley a pale river and a dark town, like milk and honey.

As for Miss Ford, she had become rather white. Although the blind had now pulled itself down, and dismissed April, Miss Ford continued to look at the window. But she cleared her throat and said hoarsely: "Will you kindly answer my questions? I asked you what your trade was."

She burst into tears.

The Stranger took her hand.

"I should like awfully to meet Rrchud, and to get to know you better," she said. She grew very red. "I say, I should be awfully pleased if you would call me Angela."

It wasn't her name, but she had noticed that something of this sort is always said when people become motherly and cry.

Then she went away.

"Lawdy," said the Mayor. "I didn't expect she'd go out by the door, somehow. Look—she's left some sort of hardware over there in the corner."

THE COMMITTEE COMES TO MAGIC

It was the sixth member who discovered, after the committee meeting, that the address on the forsaken broomstick's collar was: Number 100 Beautiful Way, Mitten Island, London.

The sixth member was saved by a merciful inefficiency of temperament from attaining the vortex of her whirlpool of charity. To be in the vortex is, I believe, almost always to see less. The bull's eye is generally blind.

Perhaps it would be more practical to call the sixth member Sarah Brown.

The shop was not expecting customers on Sunday, but its manageress had hardly got her head well into the basin when somebody entered. She stood up dripping.

"No," said the other. "But do take a seat. We met last night, you may remember. Perhaps you wouldn't mind lending me one-and-twopence to buy two chops for our luncheon. I've got an extra coupon. There's tinned salmon in stock, but I don't advise it."

"I've only got sevenpence, just enough to take me home," answered Sarah Brown. "But I can pawn my ear-rings."

"Now look here," said Sarah Brown, as she plunged her pocket-knife into the orange. "Would you mind telling me—are you a fairy, or a third-floor-back, or anything of that sort? I won't register it, or put it on the case-paper, I promise, though if you are superhuman in any way I shall be seriously tempted."

"I am a Witch," said the witch.

All witches and wizards are born strangely and die violently. They are descended always from old mysterious breeds, from women who wrought domestic magic and perished for its sake, and from men who wrought other magic among lost causes and wars without gain, and fell and died, still surprised, still interested, with their faces among flowers. All men who die so are not wizards, nor are all martyred and adventuring women witches, but all such bring a potential strain of magic into their line.

The witch was unaware that the proper answer to this was: "Oh, my Dear, do let's. Do you know I had quite a crush on you from the first minute." She did not answer at all, and Sarah Brown, who was tired of proper answers, was not sorry. Nevertheless the pause seemed a little empty, so she filled it herself, saying pedantically: "Of course I don't believe friendship is an end in itself. Only a means to an end."

"I don't know what you mean," said the witch, after wrestling conscientiously with this remark for a minute. "Do tell me—do you know yourself, or are you just saying it to see what it means?"

Sarah Brown was obviously damped by this, and the witch added kindly: "I bet you twopence you don't know what this place is."

"A shop," said Sarah Brown, who was sitting on the counter.

"Superintendent or secretary," suggested Sarah Brown moodily.

"Superintendent, I think," said the witch. "At least I know Peony calls me Soup. Do you live alone?"

"Yes."

"Then you ought to live here. This is the only place in the world of its kind. The name of this house is Living Alone. I'll read you the prospectus."

She fell suddenly upon her knees and began fighting with a drawer. The drawer was evidently one of the many descendants of the Sword Excalibur—none but the appointed hand could draw it forth. The witch, after a struggle, passed this test, and produced a parchment covered with large childish printing in red ink.

"My employer made up this," said the witch. "And the ferryman wrote it out for us."

This is the prospectus:

"It certainly sounds an unusual place," admitted Sarah Brown. "Is the house always full?"

"Never," said the witch. "A lot of people can swallow everything but the last clause. We have at present one guest, called Peony."

"What do you do with your magic?" she asked.

"Oh, many things. Chiefly I use it as an ingredient for happiness, sometimes to remind people, and sometimes to make them forget. It seems to me that some people take happiness rather tragically."

"I find," said Sarah Brown, rather sententiously, "that I always owe my happiness to earth, never to heaven."

"How d'you mean heaven?" said the witch. "I know nothing about heaven. When I used to work in the City, I bought a little book about heaven to read in the Tube every morning. I thought I should grow daily better. But I couldn't see that I did."

"Ah, how you interest and excite me," said the witch, whose attention had been frankly wandering. "You are exactly the sort of person we want in this house."

"But—ill?" said Sarah Brown pessimistically. "Oh, witch, I have been so wearisome to every one, so constantly ill. The first thing I get to know about a new hostess or a landlady is always the colour of her dressing-gown by candlelight, or whether she has one."

"Illnesses are never bad here," said the witch. "I bet you twopence I've got something in the shop that would make you well. Three fingers of happiness, neat and hot, at night—"

"You can hear what I say," said the witch.

"Yes, I can hear what you say, but when most people talk I am like a prisoner locked up; and every day there are more and more locked doors between me and the world. You do not know how horrible it is."

"Oh, well," said the witch, "as long as you can hear magic you will not lack a key to your prison. Sometimes it's better not to hear the other things. You are the ideal guest for the House of Living Alone."

"I'll go and fetch David my Dog and Humphrey my Suit-case," said Sarah Brown.

At that moment a taxi was heard to arrive at the other side of the ferry, and the ferryman's voice was heard shouting: "All right, all right, I'll be there in half a tick."

"I hope this isn't Peony in a taxi," said the witch. "I get so tired of expelling guests. She's been drawing her money, which may have been tempting."

They listened.

"No, he doesn't," shouted the witch, opening the shop door. "But do step in. We met yesterday, you may remember. I'll ask the ferryman to get half-a-dozen halfpenny buns for tea, if you will be so kind as to lend me threepence. We don't bake ourselves."

"I have had tea, thank you," said Miss Ford. "I have just come from a little gathering of friends on the other side of the river, and I thought I would call here on my way home. I had noted your address——"

She started as she came in and saw Sarah Brown, and added in her committee voice: "I had noted your address, because I never mind how much trouble I take in following up a promising case."

"How good of you to go to a little gathering of friends," said the witch, obviously trying to behave like a real human person. "I never do, except now and then by mistake. And even then I only stay when there are grassy sandwiches to eat. Once there were grassy sandwiches mixed with bits of hard-boiled egg, and then I stayed to supper. You didn't have such luck, I see, or you would look happier."

"I don't go to my friends for their food, but for their ideas," said Miss Ford.

Sarah Brown was gliding towards the door.

"Oh, don't go," said the witch, who did not recognise tact when she met it. "I have sent Harold the Broomstick for your Dog David and your Suit-case Humphrey. He is an excellent packer and very clean in his person and work. Please, please, don't go. Do you know, I live in constant dread of being left alone with a clever person."

There was a very long silence in the growing dusk. The moon could already be seen through the glass door, rising, pushing vigorously aside the thickets of the crowded sky. A crack across the corner of the glass was lighted up, and looked like a little sprig of lightning, plucked from a passing storm and preserved in the glass.

Miss Ford suddenly began to talk in a very quick and confused way. Any sane hearer would have known that she was talking by mistake, that she was possessed by some distressingly Anti-Ford spirit, and that nothing she might say in parenthesis like this ought to be remembered against her.

"Well?" said the witch.

"Well," faltered Miss Ford. "I think I came to ask you ... whether you knew of nice lodgings there ... plain wholesome bath ... respectable cooking, hot and cold ..."

Her voice faded away pathetically.

There was a sudden shattering, as the door burst open, and a dog and a suit-case were swept in by a brisk broomstick.

"I am so sorry, Miss Watkins," said Miss Ford stiffly. Her face was scarlet—neat and formal again now, but scarlet.—"I am so sorry if I have talked nonsense. I am rather run down, I think, too much work, four important meetings yesterday. I sometimes think I shall break down. I have such alarming nerve-storms."

But Sarah Brown had heard very little. She always found Miss Ford's voice difficult. She was on her knees asking her dog David what it had felt like, coming. But David was still too much dazed to say much.

"You must not think," said Miss Ford, "that because I am a practical worker I have no understanding of Inner Meanings. On the contrary, I have perhaps wasted too much of my time on spiritual matters. That is why I take quite a personal and special interest in your case. I had a great friend, now in the trenches, alas, who possessed Power. He used to come to my Wednesdays—at least I used to invite him to come, but he was dreamy like you and constantly mistook the date. He helped me enormously, and I miss him.... Well, the truest charity should be anything but formal, I think, and I saw at a glance that your case was exceptional, and that you also were Occult——"

"How d'you mean—occult?" asked the witch. "Do you mean just knowing magic?"

"How d'you mean—advertisement?" asked the witch. "This new advertisement stunt is one of the problems that tire my head. I am awfully worried by problems. The world seems to be ruled by posters now. People look to the hoardings for information about their duty. Why don't we paste up the ten commandments on all the walls and all the 'buses, and be done with it?"

"I am afraid you will be very angry with me," said the witch presently in a hollow voice. "If I was occult last night—I'm awfully sorry, but it must have been a fluke. I seem to have said so much last night without knowing it. I'm afraid I was showing off a little."

The painful tears of confession were in her eyes, but she added, changing the subject: "Do you live alone?"

"Yes, absolutely," said Miss Ford. "My friends call me a perfect hermit. I hardly ever have visitors in my spare room, it makes so much work for my three maids."

"Very amusing," said Miss Ford, after waiting a minute to see if there was any more of the prospectus. She had quite recovered herself, and was wearing the brisk acute expression that deceived her into claiming a sense of humour. "But why all those uncomfortable rules? And why that discouragement of social intercourse? I am afraid the average person of the class you cater for does not recognise the duty of social intercourse."

"This house," replied the witch, "caters for people who are outside averages. The ferryman says that people who are content to be average are lowering the general standard. I wish you could have met Peony, the only guest up to now, but she is out, and may be a teeny bit drunk when she comes in. She has gone to draw her money."

"Soldier's allotment. Unmarried wife."

The expression of Miss Ford's face tactfully wiped away this bald unfortunate statement from the surface of the conversation. "And how do you make your boarding-house pay," she asked, "if there is no charge for residence?"

"How d'you mean—pay?" asked the witch. "Pay whom? And what with? Look here, if you will come and live here you shall have a little Wednesday every week on the stairs, under license from me. Harold the Broomstick is apt to shirk cleaning the stairs, but as it happens, he is keeping company with an O-Cedar Mop in Kentish Town, and I've no doubt she would come over and do the stairs thoroughly every Tuesday night. Besides, we have overalls in stock at only two and eleven three——"

The splashing of the ferry-boat was once more heard, and then the shop quaked a little as a heavy foot alighted on the landing-stage. The ferryman was heard saying: "I don't know any party of that name, but I believe the young woman at the shop can help you."

Lady Arabel Higgins entered the shop.

"What, Meta, you here? And Sarah Brown? What a too dretfully funny coincidence. Well, Angela dear, I made a note of your address yesterday, and then lost the note—too dretfully like me. So I rang up the Mayor, and he said he also had made a note, and he would come and show me the way. But I didn't wait for him. I wanted to talk to you about——"

"Well, I must truly be going," interrupted Sarah Brown. "I'll just nip across to the Brown Borough and find a pawn-shop, being hungry."

She took up a thin captain biscuit and bit it absent-mindedly. It trembled in her hand like a leaf.

"You can never repay Pinehurst," said the witch.

Rrchud's mother said at last: "I really came to tell you that Rrchud came back on leave unexpectedly last night. Of course you must meet him—"

"Rrchud home!" exclaimed Miss Ford. "How odd! I was just telling Miss Watkins about his Power, and how strongly she reminded me of him. Do tell him to keep Wednesday afternoon free."

Lady Arabel, ignoring Miss Ford by mistake, said to the witch: "Will you come on Tuesday to tea or supper?"

"Supper, please," said the witch instantly. Tact, I repeat, was a stranger to her, so she added: "I will bring Sarah Brown too. I bet you twopence she hasn't had a decent meal for days."

THE EVERLASTING BOY

It is a place of fine weather, and this is a book of fine weather, a book written in Spring. I will not remember the winter and the rain. It was the Spring that brought Sarah Brown to Mitten Island, and the Spring that first showed her magic. It was the Spring that awoke her on her first morning in the House of Living Alone.

She awoke because it was so beautiful outside, and because there was a beautiful day coming. You could see the day secretly making preparations behind a shining mist. She heard a sound of breathless singing, and the whipping of stirred grass in the garden, the sound of some one unbearably happy, dancing. Now there is hardly anything but magic abroad before seven o'clock in the morning. Only the disciples of magic like getting their feet wet, and being furiously happy on an empty stomach.

A voice broke in: "Good for you, cully."

It was Sarah Brown's fellow-lodger leaning from her window.

The squirrel rippled higher up the may tree.

To-day she had watched magic dancing in a mackintosh, and she was at a loss.

"Nor have I," said Sarah Brown, opening the door. "But I can pawn—"

"Ow, come awf it, Cuffbut," said the fellow-lodger. "This is a respectable 'ouse, more or less, and you ain't goin' out to pawn nothink in your py-jams. I'll owe it to the milkman again. Not but what I 'adn't p'raps better pay 'im after all. I got me money paid yesterday, on'y I 'ad thought to put it away for Elbert."

"Are you Peony, the other lodger?"

"Thet's right, dearie."

"Who's Elbert?" asked Sarah Brown, and then wished she had not asked, for even without Peony's flush she should have guessed.

"'Arf a mo, kiddie, till I get rid of the milkman. Come an' sit on the stairs, an' I'll tell you a tale. I like no end tellin' this tale."

Harold the Broomstick was desultorily sweeping the stairs. He worked harder when first conscious of being watched, but seeing that they intended to stay there, on the top step, he made this the excuse to disappear indolently, leaving little heaps of dust on several of the lower steps.

"Anyway, Cuffbut, thet was me charnce, an' thet's 'ow I come to know 'ow my debt was goin' to be paid. Sherrie understood all thet. 'E was a magic man, 'e was. At least, 'e was mostly magic, but some of 'im was nothin' but a fool when all's said an' done—like any other man. I couldn't 'ave done with an all-magic bloke. Ow, 'e was a fool.... All the things 'e might 'ave bin able to do, like polishin' 'is equipment, or findin' 'is clean socks, 'e use to forever be askin' me to do. I loved doin' it. But all the things 'e couldn't do at all, like drawin' me likeness, or cuttin' out a blouse for me, 'e was forever tryin' to do."

"And what about Sherrie?" asked Sarah Brown.

"Oh, Sherrie, 'e never writes to me. But 'e promised too to come back in the Spring, an' so 'e will, for there ain't no Boche bullet that can 'it a magic man."

"It's springtime now," said Sarah Brown.

THE FORBIDDEN SANDWICH

Therefore Sarah Brown's hand had found ideal employment on a charity register. As for her mind, it usually shut its eye during office hours. Her Dog David liked the work too, as the hearth-rug was a comfortable one, and Charity, though it may suffer long in other directions, is rather particular about its firing.

"Tonk," she said. "Late of Mud Street. She has changed her address. I am the Guild of Happy Hearts. She still comes to fetch her half-pint of milk daily, and only yesterday I learnt from a neighbour that she had left Mud Street three weeks ago. It really is disgraceful the way these poor people conceal important facts from us. Have you her new address?"

"Our last address for Tonk was 12 Mud Street," answered Sarah Brown coldly. "But we have already notified you three times that the woman is not entitled to milk from the Happy Hearts, as she has been having parish relief, as well as an allotment."

"Tonk is—hm—hm," said the Happy Heart delicately in an undertone, so that the blushing masculine ear of the Dog David might be spared. "After Baby Week, you know, we feel bound to help all hm—hm women as far as we can, regardless of other considerations—"

"She has a soldier at the Front," said the Happy Heart. "I am sorry to say that she will not promise to marry him, even if he does come home. But even so—"

Sarah Brown wrote down on Miss Tonk's card the small purple cipher that stood for hm—hm. "I will make enquiries about her address," she said.

But that was not the last of Tonk. Presently the red face of the Relieving Officer loomed over the index.

"In the case of Plummett—" he began loudly.

"We stopped the groceries," roared the Relieving Officer. "But in the case of Plummett—"

"In the case of Tonk—" persisted Sarah Brown. "She has moved from Mud Street, can you tell me her last address?"

"She is living in a sort of private charitable institution, somewhere on the outskirts of the district—Mitten Island, I fancy. I don't know the exact address, because we have stopped the groceries, she paying no rent now. In the case of Plummett, I thought you might be interested to know that she got a month this morning for assaulting the Sanitary Inspector—pulling his nose, I hear. She told the magistrate it struck her as being a useless nose if it didn't notice anything wrong with her drains. The children came into the House this morning."

"I forget. Some flower name, I think. Probably Lily or Ivy. In the case of M'Clubbin, the woman is said to have fallen through a hole in the floor of the room she and her three children slept in. She was admitted into the Infirmary last night, and her furniture will be sold to pay her rent—"

"It begins with P," said Sarah Brown. "P. Tonk, unmarried wife, of Mitten Island...."

Now I could not say with certainty whether the witch, in making up this packet of sandwiches, had included the contents of one of her own little packets of magic. Sarah Brown would have been very susceptible to such a drug; her mind was always on the brink of innocent intoxication. Perhaps she was only half a woman, so that half a joy could make her heart reel and sing, and half a sorrow break it. She was defenceless against impressions, and too many impressions make the heart very tired. Therefore, I think, she was a predestined victim of magic, and it seems unlikely that the witch should have missed such an opportunity to dispense spells.

"I am doing wrong," said Sarah Brown. She took a third bite.

"I am sentimental," said Sarah Brown to her Dog David in a broken voice. She turned again to her enchanted sandwich.

Sarah Brown opened the office window, and the air of the office began at once to dance with life and the noise of children and birds. She thought perhaps these were magic noises, for she heard them so clearly. She broke her second sandwich upon the window-sill, and the sparrows crossed the street and stood on the area railing in a row below her, all speaking at once in an effort to convey to her the fact that a retreat on her part would be tactful.

The sparrow obviously buys all his clothes ready-made, probably at Jumble Sales, and he always seems to choose clothes made for a stouter bird. There is no reason why he should never look chic; he has a slimmer figure than the bullfinch, for instance, who always manages to look so well-tailored. It is just arrogance, pure Londonism, on the part of the sparrow, just that impudent socialistic spirit that makes it so difficult for us to reform the Naughty Poor.

Sarah Brown in the meanwhile, disregarding the witch, had returned to the index, and had taken from its drawer a notification form. In the space given for Name of Case she had written in her irreproachable printing hand:

"CHARITY, Cautionary Case, 12 Pan Street, Brown Borough. With reference to the above case, I have to report that it seems unsatisfactory. There are indeed grave suspicions that the above name is only an alias, the address being also probably false, for the genuine Charity's place of origin is said to be the home rather than the office. The present registrar is at a loss to identify with certainty this case. It would seem to be one of the Habits that haunt the world, collecting Kudos under assumed names...."

"Witch," said Sarah Brown, "I have got to say something."

"Oh, have you?" said the witch, a little disappointed at being interrupted. "Oh, well, I can sympathise, I know what that feels like. Get on and say it."

The Dog David, who was really a good and attentive son to Sarah Brown, came and laid his chin, with an exaggerated look of interest, on her knee-cap.

"Is it any use," said Sarah Brown, "fighting against the Habits in the world, there are so many. Who set these strange and senseless deceivers at large? Religion which has forgotten ecstasy.... Law which has forgotten justice.... Charity which has forgotten love.... Surely magic has suffered at the stake for saner ideals than these?"

"Why, of course," said the witch impatiently. "Magic generally suffered because it was so sane. I thought everybody knew that."

"Not that I know of," sighed the witch. "Sarah Brown, how long do you want me to keep quiet, while you say things that everybody surely knows?"

But Sarah Brown went on. "The real Love knows her neighbour face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has."

"You are possessed, dear Sarah Brown," said the witch. "Don't be frightened, it will soon pass off. I knew a girl who had an attack very much like this; while she was under its influence she made up a psalm pretty nearly as good as one of David's. Her mother was much alarmed about her. But she recovered quite quickly, except that she left her job as typist in a mind-improving institute and went to sea as a stewardess."

"Good God!" said Sarah Brown, pushing David from her. "What has happened to me? I have become sentimental."

The room seemed to her wild imagination to be full of the spirits of parsons and social workers with flaming swords, pointing at the door.

AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM BELOW

Sarah Brown, on the night of Lady Arabel's supper party, was unaware of the risk she ran in entering a public conveyance in company with a witch. But she was spared to a merciful extent, for nothing happened on any of the 'buses they boarded, except that, as they crossed the Canal, a cloud of sea-gulls swooped and swirled into the 'bus, resting awhile on the passengers' willing shoulders before disappearing again. Also the passengers on the Baker Street stretch sang part-songs, all the way down to Selfridge's. The conductor turned out to have rather a pleasing tenor voice.

The witch and Sarah Brown knocked at the Higgins' door five minutes before supper-time. Lady Arabel herself opened it.

"My dears, isn't it too dretful. All our servants are gone. It's an extraordinary thing, they never can stand Rrchud and his ways."

The tactful Sarah Brown nudged the witch. "Better not stay," she murmured.

"Certainly there is," added Lady Arabel. "I cooked it myself. Do you know, I've never seen a cookery book before, and the little pictures of animals with the names of joints written all over them shocked me dretfully. I feel I could have a too deliciously intimate conversation with a bullock now."

The house of Higgins had an enormous hall to which a large number of high windows gave the impression of a squint. I should think two small Zeppelins could have danced a minuet under its dome. Sarah Brown and the witch put on their cathedral look at once, by mistake, and propping their chins upon their umbrellas gazed reverently upward.

Sarah Brown and the witch were left in a small room that opened on to the great hall. It was furnished rather like a lodging-house parlour. There was a thermometer elaborately disguised as a model of the Eddystone Lighthouse on the mantelpiece, flanked on each side by a china boot in pink, with real bootlaces, and a pig looking out of the top of each. There were pictures on the walls, mostly representing young ladies, more or less obviously in love, supported by rustic properties. I have noticed that the girl's first love is the monopoly of the Victorian painter, whereas the boy's is that of the novelist, but I do not know the reason of this.

"You are despising my ornaments," he said to Sarah Brown. "I admire them awfully. I don't like really clever art. Do you know, it makes me sneeze."

Directly he spoke, one saw that he was making the usual effort of magic to appear real. Witches and wizards lead difficult lives because they have no ancestry working within them to prompt them in the little details. Whenever you see a person being unusually grown-up, suspect them of magic. You can always notice witches and wizards, for instance, after eight o'clock at night, pretending that they are not proud of sitting up late. It is all nonsense about witches being night birds; they often fly about at night, indeed, but only because they are like permanent children gloriously escaped for ever from their Nanas.

A stave played by a 'cello called them to supper, and, as they returned to the hall, a burst of earnest music from the whole orchestra partially drowned the clap of thunder that again marked Richard's passage through the door. Sarah Brown felt sure that Lady Arabel arranged this on purpose. The wizard's mother obviously had great difficulty in not noticing the phenomena connected with her son, and she wore a striving smile and a look of glassy and well-bred unconsciousness whenever anything magic happened.

"You are so lucky," sighed the witch, "plenty of room and every facility. I myself am so dreadfully cramped and hampered. I often have to boil my incantations over a spirit lamp, and even that is becoming difficult—no methylated."

"Not really lucky," said Richard. "In France the smallest pinch of magic seems to make the N.C.O. sick, and that's why I never got my stripe. To keep my hand in, I once did a little stunt with the sergeant's cigarette: it grew suddenly longer as he struck a match to light it, and went on growing till he had to ask me to light it for him, and then it shrank up and burnt his nose. Of course he couldn't really bring the thing home to me, but somehow—well, as I say, I never got my stripe."

Finally Richard indulged in a trick that was evidently a stock joke among magic people, for the witch laughed directly it began. Just as the hostess, with poised fork and spoon, was about to distribute the whitebait, the round table began to spin, and the whitebait were whisked away from her. The table continued to spin for a moment, with a deep thrilling organ sound, and when it stopped, the whitebait were found to have assembled opposite to Richard's place. He distributed them gravely. Lady Arabel turned scarlet, and murmured to Sarah Brown: "So dretfully ingenious, and so merry."

"My dear," said Lady Arabel, instantly motherly. "How too dretful. I wish I knew of something suitable. But—war-time you know,—I'm afraid I shan't be justified in keeping on the orchestra, certainly not in adding to it. Besides, of course, although women are simply too splendid nowadays, don't you think the big drum—just a wee bit unwomanly, my dear. However——"

"Are you clever?" asked Richard.

"Yes, she is," said the witch proudly. "She writes Minor Poetry. I saw a bit by her in a magazine that had no pictures,—the bit of poetry was between an article on Tariff Reform and a statement of the Coal Situation, and it began 'Oh my beloved....' I thought it was a very beautiful bit of Minor Poetry, but somehow I couldn't make it fit in with the two articles. That worried me a little."

"I haven't got a land outfit," said Sarah Brown. "But I saw a pair called Mesopotamian Officer's Model, with laces and real white buckskin collision mats between the knees, that would fit me, and I can pawn my——"

At that moment there was a loud report. Every one looked at the double bass, but all his strings were for the moment intact.

"A maroon," said the witch.

They all waited patiently while the piece continued. It was a plain uneventful piece, composed by a Higgins relative and therefore admired in the household.

"A thing that puzzles me," said the witch, taking advantage of an emotional pause while one violin was wheezing a very long small note by itself, "is why only ugly songs are really persistent. Haven't you noticed, for instance, that a peacock, or a cat on the wall, or a baby with a tin trumpet, will give their services most generously for hours on end, while a robin on a snowy tree, or a nightingale, or a fairy——"

She was interrupted by a scuffling sound in the umbrella-stand, and Harold the Broomstick, after a moment's rather embarrassing entanglement with a butterfly net, approached, panting.

Lady Arabel and Sarah Brown crossed the road to the church, Richard following a few yards behind.

"I'm afraid my little dinner-party wasn't a great success," said Lady Arabel confidentially. "Rrchud and Angela didn't get that good talk on occult subjects as Meta Ford said they would. Of course Rrchud, as you noticed, was dretfully restless and lighthearted; all boys are like that for the first few hours of their leave. He is naturally of a quiet disposition, though you wouldn't think it from to-night."

There was a distant blot of gunfire on the air, just as they reached the door of the crypt. The very stout dog of the Vicar (are not all reverend dogs fat?) was waiting there with a bored look.

"The Vicar allows no animals inside the crypt. So hard on Mrs. Perry's canary which has fits. I was here once when the Vicar's youngest son brought in a rabbit under his coat. A dretful scene, my dear."

Opposite to them, on two campstools, sat a young bridling mother of fifty, with her old hard daughter of sixteen or so. Hard was that daughter in every way; you would have counted her age in winters, not in summers, so obviously untender were her years. An iron plait of hair lay for about six inches down her spine; her feet and ankles made the campstool on which she sat, looking pathetically ethereal. Of such stuff as this is the backbone of England made, which is perhaps why the backbone of England sometimes seems so sadly inflexible.

There was a screeching noise outside, followed by an incredible crash. It seemed to cleave a bottomless abyss between one second and the next, so that one seemed to be conscious for the first time in an astonished and astonishing world.

The campstooled mother gave a luxurious little shriek as soon as the crash was safely over. "The villains," she said kittenishly. "Aiming at places of worship as usual. I am absolutely paralysed with terror. Mary, darling, I don't believe you turned a hair."

"Pas un cheval," replied her firm daughter, in not unnatural error. One could easily see that she was beloved at home, and one wondered why.

The sound of the guns seemed only a negative form of sound after the bomb, and clearly above the firing could be heard a howl. The Vicar's dog, still howling, ran into the crypt.

A nearer gun began to fire, and one of the old ladies on the other side of the crypt suddenly threw down her knitting and began confessing her sins. "Ow, I shall go to 'ell," she shouted dramatically. "I bin sich a wicked ol' woman. I nearly done in me first ol' man by biffin' the chopper at 'is nob, and Lawd, the lies I bin an' tol' me second only yesterday."

"This is indeed a solemn moment," said the sheeted spinster sitting down beside Lady Arabel. "I hope I am meeting it in a proper spirit, but of course one is still only human, and naturally nervous. I have learned my statement by heart."

"What statement?" asked Lady Arabel, who was rather deeply engrossed in turning the heel of the sock she was knitting.

"The statement I shall make when the sheep are divided from the goats."

"You mistake me," said the sheeted lady, bridling. "There is, I am confident, no cause whatever for pessimism on my part. I have no misgivings as to the verdict. But not being used to courts of law, I thought it best to learn my statement, as I say, by heart."

The old knitter had been rather annoyed to find her confession interrupted. "A wicked ol' woman I may be," she said with more dignity. "But I'll never regret givin' that bloody speshul a bit o' me mind this mornin' when 'e turned saucy to the sugar queue. I ses to 'im——"

"We all have our faults," Lady Arabel's neighbour broke in. "But I think, at this solemn moment, I may feel thankful that hastiness of recrimination was never one of mine. All my life I have made it an unalterable rule never to make a statement without first asking myself: Is it TRUE? Is it JUST? Is it KIND?"

"Be that as it may," said the ladylike creature. (One could see she was a Real Lady even through the sheet. Obviously she read the Morning Post daily.) "Be that as it may, perhaps you can help me in one little matter which is intriguing me slightly even at this solemn moment. Do you suppose the sheep will be allowed to hear the trial of the goats, or will the court be cleared? I must say I should be so interested to hear the defence of the late churchwarden who eloped with——"

"Ah, please, please," said Lady Arabel, "don't talk in that dretful way. Don't let your mind dwell on the worst. I assure you that you will be all right."

"Good gracious," shrieked the kittenish mother. "A candle burning to-night. And probably unshaded. Don't you know that those fiends in the sky are always on the watch for the slightest illumination?"

"Fiends in the sky!" exclaimed the sheeted lady. "Do you mean to say they are abroad even at this solemn moment?"

"Oh, don't talk such rot," implored the hard flapper. "Who the dickens do you suppose was responsible for that crash?"

"Responsible for the crash!" said the other, whose tones were becoming more and more alive with exclamation marks. "Is then the solemn work of summoning us entrusted to the minions of the Evil One?"

A series of crashes interrupted her, the work of the adjacent gun. The earth shook, and each report was followed by the curious ethereal wail of shells on their way.

"Most unwise," said Lady Arabel, "to touch that sort of thing late at night. I always have a little Benger myself."

Sarah Brown happened to look at Richard. His eyes were shut, but he was smiling very broadly with tight lips, and his face was turned towards the ceiling. His fingers were very tense and busy on his lap, as though he were still fidgeting with magic. But her study of him was interrupted by the loud denouncing voice of the very venerable man who had led the procession of late-comers.

"A dog in this hallowed place," he said, pointing at the deeply disconcerted Rupert who was weaving himself nervously in and out of his master's legs. "Never in all the forty years of my ministration here have I allowed such an outrage——"

Rupert howled again, and lay down as if about to faint.

"Forty years have I been Vicar of this parish," said the veteran, "and never——"

"What?" interrupted the Vicar, "Forty years Vicar of this parish. Then you must be Canon Burstley-Ripp. How very extraordinary, I always understood that he passed away quite ten years ago."

He approached the old man and strove to button-hole him. The sheet at first foiled him in this intention, but he presently contented himself with seizing a little corner of it, by which he led his aged brother vicar into a corner. There they could be heard for some time misunderstanding each other in low earnest tones.

"Ow, what a wicked ol' woman I bin an' bin," suddenly burst forth again the repentant knitter. "I bin an' stole 'arf a pound o' sugar off of the Eelite 'Atshop where I does a bit o' cleanin'. Ef I get out o' this alive, I swear I'll repay it an 'undredfold—that is ef I can get that much awf me sugar card...."

"The Trump at last," said Lady Arabel's garrulous neighbour, rising with alacrity, and twitching her sheet into more becoming folds. "I was just wondering——"

But at that moment the two Vicars approached, and the elder one, including both the spinster and the mysterious family in one glance, spoke in a clerical yet embarrassed voice.

"Dear friends, a slight but inconvenient mistake has occurred, and I am afraid I must ask you to submit blindly to my guidance in a matter strangely difficult to explain, even as I—myself in much confusion—bow to the advice of my reverend friend here. It would be out of place——"

"Believe me, madam," replied the aged Burstley-Ripp. "You overrate the solemnity of the moment. I must earnestly ask you all to return with me to the places whence—labouring under an extraordinary error—we came to-night. I see that Mrs. Parachute trusts me, and is prepared to lead her little flock to rest again. You, madam——"

The pale party filed out of the crypt and disappeared. The remaining Vicar smote his brow, and addressed the now calm Rupert in a low voice, but with such unaccountable warmth that that harassed animal disappeared precipitately in the direction of his home.

Lady Arabel, Sarah Brown, and Richard crossed the churchyard together.

AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM ABOVE

As soon as the witch had out-distanced the noise of expectant London, she heard quite distinctly the approach of London's guests. They came with a chorus of many notes, all deep and dangerous.

The witch, with one soothing hand on the bristling mane of her Harold, lay on her front on the cloud she had chosen, and looked down through a little hole in it. It was practically the only cloud present that would have afforded reasonable cover; the others were mere wisps of sky-weed floating in the moonlight.

There was a greater chorus of aeroplanes below her now; the whole sky was ringing with it. The witch could hear a deep bass-voiced machine, a baritone, a quavering tenor, and—thin and sharp as a pin—a little treble sound that made Harold rear and struggle to be free.

"Another witch," said the witch. "I was wondering why the Huns hadn't got their magic organised by now." She mounted her Harold and slipped off the cloud.

Both broomsticks were by now so uproariously excited that neither witch was able to aim her magic missiles very carefully, and indeed it was not long before Harold passed entirely beyond control. After bucking violently once or twice, he gave a wild high cry that was like the wind howling through the fierce forest past of his race, and fell upon the other broomstick, fixing his bristles into its throat. The shock of the collision was too much for both witches. Our witch—if I may call her so—was shot over Harold's head, and landed on the ample breast of her adversary, who, in consequence, lost her balance. They fell together into space.

For they were locked together. And the enemy witch's cloak, an orthodox witch cloak except for its colour, which was German field-grey instead of red, was spread out like a parachute, and was supporting them upon their peaceful and almost affectionate descent.

Our witch was the first to recover herself. She stood up and brushed herself, remarking: "By jove, that parachute cloak of yours is a great dodge. I wish I'd thought of it. I always keep my full-dress togs put away, like the ass that I am. A stitch or two, and a few lengths of whalebone would have done the trick."

The witches faced each other on their little unstable sanctuary in the kingdom of space. Our witch felt secretly sick, and at the same time she tore fear from her mind, and knew that death was but an imperfectly kept secret, and that not an evil one. After all, we have condemned it unheard.

Both witches could talk a magic tongue, and make themselves mutually understood. Neither knew the other's natural tongue. But when our witch noticed several large ferocious tears rolling down her opponent's cheeks, she was able, by means of magic, to say: "Great Scott, my good person, what are you crying for?"

"I am not crying," replied the German witch. "I would not allow one tear of mine to fall upon and water one possible grain of wheat in this accursed country of yours. Certainly I am not crying."

"England is the World Enemy," said the German, evidently pleased to meet someone to whom this information was fresh. "Throughout the ages she has been the Robber State, crushing the weaker nations, adding to her own wealth by treachery, and now forcing this war of aggression upon her peace-loving neighbours."

Our witch laughed. She was forgetting her danger. "This is really rather funny," she said. "Do you know what's happened? You've been reading the Daily Mail and misunderstanding it. The whole of that quotation applied to Germany, not England. It's Germany that's being naughty. You made a mistake, but never mind, I won't repeat it."

The German took no notice of this. The past three years had made her an adept in taking no notice.

"At your mercy," breathed our witch, remembering. She looked up. The broomsticks were closer now, and through the breathless air, amidst the dream-like firing of the guns below, she could hear the difficult gasping of the hard-pressed Harold, still fighting bravely but with hardly a twig on his head.

She clutched a pinch of cloud nervously, and it broke off in her hand. She recalled her senses with a devastating effort.

"Do you mean to say," she said, after a moment, "that poor dear Germany really believes that she is right and we are wrong? I suppose, when you come to think of it, a man-eating tiger feels the same way. It fights with a high heart, and a hot reproach, just as we do——"

"We are Crusaders," said the German. "Crusaders at War with Evil."

"Why, how funny—so are we," said our witch. "But then how very peculiar that two Crusaders should apparently be fighting each other. Where then is the Evil? In No Man's Land?"

"We are fighting," recited the German glibly, "because England is the World Enemy. Throughout the ages she has been the Rob——"

"We're within range of our guns," said our witch, looking down. "This cloud must be sinking."

"It will never sink enough to save you," said the German, trying to conceal the nervousness with which she rearranged her rigid-looking cloak round her. She seemed to be sinking herself to a certain extent; perhaps the warmth of her emotions was melting the cloud beneath her. Certainly she now sat, apparently squat as an idol, her figure submerged in cloud to the waist.

"As one Crusader to another," she said, "do you find it does much good in the war against Evil to drop bombs on people in their homes? After all, every baby is good in bed, and even soldiers when on leave are anti-militarist."

"Oh, but surely not," said our witch eagerly. "It is at home that people are kindly and think what they will have for supper, and bathe their babies. Men come home when they are hurt or hungry, and women when they are lonely or tired. Nobody is taught anything stupid or international at home. You can bring death to a home, but never a righteous scourge. Nobody feels scourged or instructed by a bomb in their parlour, they just feel dead, and dead without a reason."

The cloud was very small now. The filmy edges of it were faintly rising and falling like the seaweed frill of a rock in the sea. The witch kept her eyes on her opponent's face, because to look anywhere else gave her a white feeling in her head.

"I know, I know," wept the German witch. "My wizard fell at Vimy Ridge...."

"You are talking magic at last," said our witch. "Dear witch, why don't you go home and ask how it can be a good plan for one Crusader against Evil to blow up another? How can two people be righteously scourging each other at the same time? It is like the old problem of two serpents eating each other, starting at the tail. There must be some misunderstanding somewhere. Or else some real Evil somewhere."

"There is," said the German, recovering herself. "England is Evil. England is the World Enemy. Throughout the ages she has been the Robber State, crushing——"

Even as the English witch watched her enemy's disaster, the larger part of the cloud, weakened by all the shock and movement, broke away with a hissing sound. The witch's feet hung now over space, she dared not move; she had difficulty in steadying herself with her unwounded arm, for her hand could find only a quicksand of dissolving cloud to lean on. She had no thoughts left but thoughts of danger and of pain.

Harold the Broomstick was crippled, he stumbled as he flew, sometimes he dropped a score of feet, and span. He did stunts by mistake.

They had not strength enough between them to get home. They made a forced landing in the silver loneliness of Kensington Gardens. It was a fortunate place, for there is much magic there. Wherever there are children who pretend, there grows a little magic in the air, and therefore the wind of Kensington Gardens thrills with enchantment, and the Round Pond, full of much pretence of great Armadas, crossed and re-crossed with the abiding wakes of ships full of treasure and romance, is a blessed lake to magic people.

The bugles sounded All-clear in many keys all round the ear's horizon; their sound matched the waning moonlight.

The witch bathed her shoulder, and then she found her way to a little quiet place she knew of, where no park-keeper ever looks, a place where secret and ungardened daffodils grow in springtime, a place where all the mice and birds play unafraid, because no cat can find the way thither. You can see the Serpentine from that place, and the bronze shadows under its bridge, but no houses, and no railways, and no signs of London.

THE FAERY FARM

"Ow Marmaduke!" said Peony, "is it all over? Are you sure? Them 'uns is so bloody deceitful you never know but what they might go an' blow a bugle or two to mike believe they'd done, an' then drops bombs on us just as we was comin' 'appily out from under our beds."

"It's all truly over," said Sarah Brown, who had come home through a roar of rumour. "They say we've brought down at least one Boche. In fact the ferryman says his aunt telephoned that the special on her corner says a female Boche was brought down. But that hardly sounds likely. Hasn't the witch come home yet?"

"Lawd no," replied Peony. "The dear ol' Soup never comes 'ome of a moonlight night. It's my belief she goes to Maiden'ead among the Jews, to keep out of the wiy, and 'oo's to blime 'er?"

"Well, that's all right," said Sarah Brown. "For now I shall be able to buy—without pawning anything for the moment—a little land outfit from stock. I know she has some."

The night was by then far from young, in fact it was well into its second childhood. But Sarah Brown and the Dog David sought and tried on land outfits for several hours.

"In six hours," she said, "I shall be on my way to something utterly new."

And in six hours she was on her way, whistling, across the Parish of Faery. The Dog David ran in front of her among the daisies. The rabbits can never be caught in this land of happy animals, but they give good sport and always play fair.

I think the Dog David in his own way shared the dream that leads wayfarers through the Enchanted Forest. When he came out with Sarah Brown under the tasselled arch of Travellers' Joy that crosses the end of the Green Ride, he was all shining and dewy with adventure, and his tail was upright, as though he were pretending that it carried a flag.

Oak trees stood round the foot of that pale hill, and the general effect was rather that of parsley round a ham.

Between two oaks Sarah Brown, following directions, found the beginning of the Daisified Path. There were not only daisies all over the path but real violets on either side of it. The daisies looked one in the face, but the violets did not, because they had morbidly bad manners. Still of course manners are very small change and count for very little; the violet, being an artist, is entitled to any manners it likes, while the daisy has no temperament whatever, and no excuse for eccentricity. Grasshoppers tatted industriously and impartially among the daisies and the violets.

At the gate of Higgins Farm, Sarah Brown was a little disconcerted to find a small dragon. It was coiled round a tree beside the clipped box archway. It was not a very fine specimen, being of a brownish-green colour, and having lost the tip of one wing. Its spine was serrated, especially deeply between its shoulder blades, where it could raise a sort of crest if angered or excited. But at present it was asleep, its saturnine and rather wistful face rested upon one scaly paw.

"Gosh," it said. "Asleep again! I was waiting for you, and the sun on my back always makes me sleepy. I am the foreman. Higgins telephoned that you were coming."

It preceded her through the little green archway that led to the farm. The sight reminded Sarah Brown of watching from Golders Green Tube Station the train one has just missed dive into the tunnel. She followed.

I find that there are quite a lot of people who cannot say the word "gone" without adding the clause about the good niggers. These people have vague minds, sown like an allotment with phrases in grooves. Directly the dragon said "to an extent" without qualifying the extent, one saw why it had no gift of discipline.

They reached a part of a field in which broad beans were enjoying an innocent childhood among white butterflies.

"If you wouldn't mind," said the dragon shyly, "I should like you to hoe between the rows of these beans. You will find a hoe against the big stack. This is your row, I reserved it for you."

All the other rows were occupied by fairy women with their skirts tucked up—for only your amateur land-woman wears breeches. They all had hoes, but were not using them much. They were singing curious old round songs like summer dreams; you could hear strange fragments of phrases passing from voice to voice. They took no notice of Sarah Brown, and she began to work.

David sat uncomfortably on a broad bean, protesting against this new mania. For a moment he had thought that she was seeking for a mouse with some patent mouse-finding implement. He had even tried to help her, and turned over a clod with a critical paw, but one sniff had showed him the empty futility of the thing.

Then you may see the erring machine suddenly remember itself, and check itself in the act of some new paroxysm. It remembers the European War that gave it birth; it thinks of its mates scanning the sky for its coming; its frivolity ebbs suddenly. The eastern sky becomes once more its highway instead of its trapeze. It collects its wits, emits a few contrite bubbles of smoke, and leaps beyond sight.

Sarah Brown, who worked a great deal more industriously than any one else in sight, soon overtook them, and while conscious of that touch of interested scorn always felt by the One towards the Herd, found relief in watching their vagaries, and presently in speaking to them.

For she needed relief, poor Sarah Brown, her disabilities were catching her up; a hoarse contralto cough was reminding her of many doctors' warnings against manual work. She could feel, so to speak, the distant approaching tramp of that pain in her side under whose threat she had lived all her life. But there were seventy-five beans yet.

"Let them blist," she said defiantly. "This row of beans was given me to hoe, and Death itself shall not take it from me."

She could almost imagine she saw Death, waiting for her tactfully beyond the last bean. She had no sense of proportion. She was so very weary of having her life interrupted by her weakness that anything that she had begun to do always seemed to her worth finishing, even under torture. To finish every task, in spite of all hindrance, was her only ambition, but it was almost always frustrated.

Seventy more beans. "Three score and ten," thought Sarah Brown. "What's that? Only a lifetime." She bent to her work.

A great clump of buttercups bestrode her bean row, and as after a struggle she dragged its protesting roots from the earth, something fell from it.

"Oh, a nest," she gasped. "Look, I have hoed up a nest."

Cries of consternation were heard from every bean-row.

Clement's nest was really almost more than semi-detached. It had been but lightly wedged between two buttercup stalks. The two eggs in it were at once unseated, and one was broken. Sarah Brown was deeply distressed.

"What a blind fool I am," she said, trying helplessly to replace the nest. "Won't Clement ever come back?"

"Mrs. Clement won't," said the nearest fairy. "She is almost hysterical about the sanctity of the home, and all that. She'll probably get a divorce now."

"Oh, poor Clement, poor Clement," said Sarah Brown. "Will he be terribly cut up?"

"There he is," replied the fairy, pointing upward. "He's watching you. That's Clement's voice you hear."

"Perfectly happy," mocked the fairy. "His family only sings like that when it's upset. Perfectly happy indeed! Can't you understand tragedy when you hear it?"

Sarah Brown with despairing care tucked the nest up under a bean, and replaced the unbroken egg.

"Do you mean to tell me, then," she said, after a busy painful pause, "that Shelley probably misunderstood that lark he wrote a poem about? He called it a blithe spirit, you know, because it sang. Do you suppose it wasn't one?"

"Certainly not," said the fairy. "I don't know the actual facts of the case, but without a doubt your friend Shelley was standing on the unfortunate bird's nest all the time he was writing his poem."

Sarah Brown, with a deep sigh, began hoeing again.

Fifty beans yet.

The Dog David, impatient of her unnatural taste in occupations, had forsaken her. She could trace his course by a moving ripple across the potato patch, just as a shark's movement seams the sea.

Forty beans.

Sarah Brown dropped her hoe and fell upon her knees.

"I can't hoe any more," she said. "There are twenty-five more beans, but I can't hoe them."

"Why should you?" asked the nearest fairy indifferently. "The foreman never notices if we shirk. We always do."

Even in affliction she was prosy.

"I would advise you to go and have your dinner," another fairy said. "Only that I ate your sandwiches as I passed just now. But I left a little lemonade in your bottle. Go under the trees and drink it."

"I can't move," said Sarah Brown.

"Sit there then," said the fairies, and passed on, tickling but not uprooting the weeds in their rows. Fairies are never ill. They have immortal bodies, but no souls. If they see you in pain, they simply think you are flaunting your superiority and your immortal soul in their faces.

The dragon undulated up the field. "Very nicely hoed," he said, looking vaguely at Sarah Brown's row. "Much better than the other rows. Having your dinner? Quite right too."

He never noticed the twenty-five unhoed beans.

Sarah Brown wondered whether she could cut her throat with a hoe.

"Suicide while of sound mind," she said. "The said mind being entirely sick of its unsound body."

If she sat absolutely still and upright the pain was bearable. But even to think of movement brought tears of pain to her eyes. She detached her mind from her predicament, and sank into a warm tropical sea of thought. She was no real thinker, but she thought much about thinking, and was passionately interested in watching her own mind at work. Thought was like sleep to her, she sank deeply into it without reaching anything profound, nothing resulted but useless dreams, and a certain comforting and defiant intimacy with herself.

So she thought of Richard, not of Richard's Richard, but of some pale private Richard of her own.

It seemed that the afternoon had now long possessed the fields, it had wakened into a live and electric blue the Enchanted Forest which she had last noticed shimmering in its noon green.

All the workers at the approach of Richard were working busily, bent ostentatiously in the form of hairpins up and down their rows. The dragon was rippling anxiously along at the heels of the white horse; a helpless hoping for the best expressed itself in every spike along his spine.

"I don't really know why she's idling like that," Sarah Brown heard him say in his breathy pathetic voice. "I left her hard at work. They're all the same when my back's turned. A fellow needs to have eyes at the tip of his tail."

"I was meditating suicide," replied Sarah Brown candidly, if faintly. "I am a stricken and useless parasite on the face of your fine earth. But my hoe is too blunt."

"I have a pocket-knife with three blades I could lend you," said Richard, slapping himself enquiringly over several pockets. "Or would you rather try a natty little spell I thought of this morning while I was shaving. I think any one stricken might find it rather useful."

"Ah, give it to me. Give it to me," said Sarah Brown.

Richard fumbled with something very badly folded up in newspaper. He also tried ineffectively to light a match by wiping it helplessly against his riding breeches. He seemed to have none of the small skill in details that comes to most people before they grow up. He did everything as if he were doing it for the first time.

"I had nothing but the Morning Post to wrap it in," he murmured. "I'm afraid that may have spoilt the magic a little."

It was the dragon finally who produced the necessary light. After watching Richard with the anxious sympathy of one ineffectual for another, it said: "Let me," and kindly breathed out a little flame, which set the packet aflare for a moment.

The ashes fluttered down from Richard's hand among the beans, and a thin violet stalk of smoke went up.

She had never done this before, she had always been present to disturb and interrupt herself. She had never seen the world before, except through the little glazed peepholes, called eyes, through which her everyday self rather wistfully believed that it could see. Now, of course, she knew what seeing was, and for the first time she was aware of the real sizes of things. Poor man measures all things by the size of his own foot. He looks complacently at the print of his boot in the mud, and notices that the ant which he crushed was not nearly as big as his foot, therefore the ant does not matter to him. He also notices that those same feet of his would not be able to walk to the moon within a reasonable time, therefore the moon does not matter to him.

Sarah Brown had for a while all the fun of being a god. She was nowhere and she was everywhere. She could have counted the hairs on David's head. The world waved like a flower upon a thin purple stalk of smoke....

Her eyes began to see again. She was aware, of the hollowed tired eyes of Richard fixed upon her. The dragon dawned once more upon her sight, it was inquisitively watching developments, while pretending to claw a weed or two out of a neighbouring bean-row.

The horizon was rusty with a rather heavy sunset. The fields were full of twilight and empty of fairies.

Sarah Brown came to herself with a start, she was shocked to find that she had opened her mouth to say something absolutely impossible to Richard. David's chin was resting on her hand. Her side felt frozen and dangerous but not painful.

The Horse Vivian, who was so white as to be almost phosphorescent in the dusk, was now further illuminated by a little red light on his breast, and a little green light on his tail. Richard was fond of making elaborate and unnecessary arrangements like this, while neglecting to acquire skill in the more usual handicrafts.

Sarah Brown, a person of little weight, was placed astride on the back of the Horse Vivian. Richard walked beside. The dragon nodded good-bye, and disappeared into its home, a low tunnel-like barn, evidently built specially for it, with a door at each end, and a conveniently placed chimney which enabled it to breathe enough fire to cook its meals without suffocating itself.

Now this ride home, through the Enchanted Forest, on a tall horse, with Richard walking beside her, was the most perfect hour of Sarah Brown's life.

The Enchanted Forest is only an accumulation of dreams, and from every traveller through it it exacts toll in the shape of a dream. By way of receipt, to every traveller it gives a darling memory that neither death nor hell nor paradise can efface.

As they passed along the Green Ride, the red light from the Horse Vivian's neck made a sort of heralding ghost before them on the grass. Bats darted above them for a few yards at a time, and were twitched aside as though by a string or a reminding conscience. The telegraph wires, bound for the post office of Faery, run through the Enchanted Forest, and the poles in the faint light were like tall crucifixes. A long way off, through the opening at the end of the Forest, were the little lights of Mitten Island.

"Do you know," said Richard—and this is unfortunately the sort of thing that young men do say at silent and enchanted moments—"that if all the magic in this Forest were collected together and compressed into a liquid form, it would be enough to stop the War in one moment?"

"In one moment."

"My hat!" said Sarah Brown.

"The powers of magic haven't been anything like thoroughly estimated even yet," said Richard.

"I suppose the War was made by black magic," suggested Sarah Brown, trying to talk intelligently and to be faithful to her own thoughts at the same time.

"Good Lord, no," replied Richard. "The worst of this war is that it has nothing whatever to do with magic of any sort. It was made and is supported by men who had forgotten magic, it is the result of the coming to an end of a spell. Haven't you noticed that a spell came to an end at the beginning of the last century? Why, doesn't almost every one see something lacking about the Victorian age?"

"Something certainly died with Keats and Shelley," sighed Sarah Brown.

"Does this century believe in fairies? If the spell came to an end, how is it that we are so magic now?"

"This century knows that it doesn't know everything," said Richard. "And as for spells—we have started a new spell. That's the curious part of this War. So gross and so impossible and so unmagic was its cause, that magic, which had been virtually dead, rose again to meet it. The worse a world grows, the greater will magic grow to save it. Magic only dies in a tepid world. I think there is now more magic in the world than ever before. The soil of France is alive with it, and as for Belgium—when Belgium gets back home at last she will find her desecrated house enchanted.... And the same applies to all the thresholds in the world which fighting-men have crossed and will never cross again, except in the dreams of their friends. That sort of austere and secret magic, like a word known by all and spoken by none, is pretty nearly all that is left to keep the world alive now...."

The travellers were approaching the end of the Green Ride, but that did not matter to Sarah Brown, for there had been nothing lacking all the way.

"Love——," began Richard in a loud exalted voice, and then suddenly a searchlight glared diagonally across the end of the Ride, over Mitten Island, and quenched the magic of the moment.

"Sorry," said Richard. "I thought I was talking to my True Love."

THE REGRETTABLE WEDNESDAY

"It's almost like magic, isn't it," said the witch, winking busily in return.

"Well, I've done what you told me to," said the Mayor.

"What was that?"

"You're just proud enough," said the witch. "You're a darling. If ever I can help you in a business way, let me know. If you want to start a side line, for instance, in Happiness, I can give you a tip where to get it wholesale, within limits. It'd go like wildfire in the Brown Borough, if you put in an ounce or two, gratis of course, with every order."

"You will 'ave your joke," murmured the Mayor. "But I like it in you. I'm a man that never takes a joke amiss. Let's go for a walk together."

They found themselves presently seated at the marble-topped table of an A.B.C. After an interval that could hardly be accurately described as presently, sausages and mash dawned on the horizon, and the witch waved her fork rudely at it as it approached.

"Mashed is splendid stuff to sculp with," she said, roughing in a ground plan upon her plate with the sure carelessness of the artist. "This is going to be an ivory castle built upon a rock in a glassy sea. The sausage is the dragon guarding it, and this little crumb of bread is the emprisoned princess, a dull but sterling creature——"

"Look 'ere, Miss Watkins," interrupted the Mayor. "I'm not as a rule an impulsive man, and I don't want to startle you——"

"Well, I'm blessed," exclaimed the Mayor. "You're a perfect witch, I declare." He laid a large meat-like hand upon hers. "But you know, you can't put the lid on me so easy as that. Ever since you came into that old committee room I saw there was something particular about you, something that you an' me 'ad in common. I'm not speakin' so much of us bein' in the same line of business. Some'ow—oh, 'ang it all, let's get out of this and take a taxi. I'm not a kissing man, but——"

He seemed very persistent in applying negatived adjectives to himself. It was not his fault if the world failed to grasp exactly what he was, or rather exactly what he was not.

"I have often wondered," interrupted the witch, "talking of kissing—what would happen if two snipes wanted to kiss each other? It would have to be at such awfully long range, wouldn't it. Or——"

"Don't you think this is becoming rather a tiresome scene?" said the witch. "Somehow over luscious, don't you think? I wish those apple dumplings would hurry up."

"'Ere, miss," said the Mayor ungraciously to a passing whirlwind. "'Urry them dumplings."

"'Urry them dumplings," echoed the whirlwind to a little hole in the wall.

The witch had a silly vision of two distressed dumplings, like dilatory chorus girls, mad with the nightmare feeling of not being dressed in time, hearing their cue called in a heartless voice from the inexorable sky, desperately applying the last dab of flour to their imperfect complexions. But the witch found no fault with them when they came. She gave them her whole attention for some minutes.

"You will 'ave your joke," said the Mayor in a hollow voice. "I never met such a gurl as you for a bit of fun. I don't believe you've got any 'eart."

There, of course, he was right. A heart is a sort of degree conferred by Providence on those who have passed a certain examination. Magic people are only freshmen in our college, and it is useless for us—secure in the possession of many learned letters after our names—to despise them. They will become sophisticated in due course.

"How d'you mean—heart?" asked the witch therefore. "I've still got an awful hunger inside me, if that's anything to do with it. I'll tell you what. It's Wednesday. Let's go and call on Miss Ford. She might have grassy sandwiches."

But no rain fell. Rain cannot fall in this book of fine weather.

The draught that intruded into the flat ruffled the neat hair of five persons, Miss Ford herself, Lady Arabel Higgins, Miss Ivy MacBee, Mr. Bernard Tovey, and Mr. Darnby Frere.

Miss MacBee always seemed to be seated on tenterhooks, even in the most comfortable of chairs. Her Spartan spine never consented graciously to the curves of cushions. She had smooth padded hair and smooth padded manners, and her eyes were magnified by thick pince-nez to a cow-like size. Most people, especially most women, were instinctively sorry for her, because she always looked a little clever and very uncomfortable.

Mr. Darnby Frere was the editor of an advanced religious paper called I Wonder, but he never wondered really. He knew almost everything, and therefore, while despising the public for knowing so little, he encouraged it to continue wondering, so that he might continue despising and instructing it.

The entrance of the witch and the Mayor was to a certain extent a crisis, but Miss Ford kept her head, and her three friends, though grasping at once the extraordinary situation, did not give way to panic.

"Well, well, well," said the Mayor, looking round and breathing very loudly. "This is a cosy little nook you've got 'ere."

He was not at all at his ease, but being a business man, and being also blessed with a peculiarly inexpressive face, he was successfully dissembling his discomfort.

She looked round in the hall, and said with a friendly smile: "I'm afraid Harold gets a bit irritable sometimes. I often tell him to count ten before he lets himself go, but he forgets. Did he hurt you?"

I am afraid the angry Mayor did not give Harold credit for much initiative.

She interrupted herself as her eyes fell on some green sandwiches which were occupying the third floor of a wicker Eiffel Tower beside Miss Ford. "Oh how gorgeous," she said. "Do you know, I've only had two meals in the last two days."

Nobody present had ever been obliged to miss a meal, so this statement seemed to every one to be a message from another world.

"You must tell us about all your experiences, my dear Miss Watkins," said Miss Ford, leading the witch towards a chair by the fire. The witch sat down suddenly cross-legged on the hearth-rug, leaving her rather embarrassed hostess in the air, so to speak, towering rigidly above her.

"How d'you mean—experiences?" said the witch, after eating one sandwich in silent ecstasy. "I was up in the sky last night, talking to a German. Was that an experience?"

"The sky last night was surely no place for a lady," said Mr. Frere with rather sour joviality.

"Great Scott," exclaimed the witch. "But——"

"Yes, I was," persisted Miss MacBee. "I lay on the hammock which I have had slung in my cellar, and shut my eyes, and loosed my spirit, and it shot upward like a lark released. It detached itself from the common trammels of the body, yes, my spirit, in shining armour, fought with the false, cruel spirits of murderers."

"I hadn't got any shining armour," sighed the witch, who had been looking a little puzzled. "But I had the hell of a wrangle with a Boche witch who came over. We fought till we fell off our broomsticks, and then she quoted the Daily Mail at me, and then she fell through a hole and broke her back over the cross on St. Paul's."

It was Miss MacBee's turn to look puzzled, but she said to Miss Ford: "My dear, you have brought us a real mystic."

"How d'you mean—mystic?" asked the witch. "I don't think I can have made myself clear. Excuse me," she added to Miss Ford, "but this room smells awfully clever to any one coming in from outside. Do you mind if I dance a little, to move the air about?"

"We shall be delighted," said Miss Ford indulgently. "Shall I play for you?"

The witch did not answer; she rose, and as she rose she threw a little white paper packet into the fire. She danced round the sofa and the chairs. The floor shook a little, and all her watchers twisted their necks gravely, like lizards watching an active fly.

The parlour-maid, by appearing in the doorway with an inaudible announcement, diverted their attention, though she did not interrupt the witch's exercises.

At any rate the stranger looked ill at ease, and especially disconcerted by the sight of the dancing witch.

Miss Ford realised by now that her Wednesday had for some reason gone mad. She had lost her hold on the reins of that usually dignified equipage; there was nothing now for her to do but to grip tight and keep her head.

She therefore concealed her ignorance of her newest guest's identity, she stiffened her lips and poured out another cup of tea with a nerveless hand. The stranger took the cup of tea with some relief, and said: "Thenk you, meddem."

The witch stopped dancing, and stood in front of the newcomer's chair.

"Oh certainly, certainly," said Miss Ford, who was staring vaguely into the fireplace. A rather fascinating thread of lilac smoke was spinning itself out of the ashes of the little white paper packet.

There was a stunned silence in the room, broken only by the pastoral sound of the witch eating grassy sandwiches. After a moment Miss Ford, the Mayor, and Lady Arabel all began speaking at once, and each stopped with a look of relief on hearing that some one else was ready to take the responsibility of speaking.

Then the witch began with her mouth full: "You know——," but Lady Arabel interrupted her.

"Angela dear, be silent. This does not concern you. Of course, inspector, we're all only too dretfully anxious to do anything to help the Law, but you must specify the occasion more exactly. Our committee sees so many applicants."

The threads of curious smoke in the fireplace were increasing. They shivered as though with laughter, and flowed like crimped hair up the chimney.

"I had a dinner-party last night certainly," stammered Lady Arabel. A trembling seized the sock she was knitting. She had turned the heel some time ago, but in the present stress had forgotten all about the toe. The prolonged sock grew every minute more and more like a drain-pipe with a bend in it. "Why yes, of course I had a dinner-party; why shouldn't I? My son Rrchud, a private in the London Rifles, this young lady, Miss Angela—er—, and her friend—such a good quiet creature...."

"And 'oo else was in the 'ouse?" asked the policeman, glancing haughtily at the witch.

"Oh nobody, nobody. The servants all gave notice and left—too dretfully tahsome how they can't stand Rrchud and his ways. Of course there was the orchestra—twenty-five pieces—but so dependable."

"Your son 'as peculiar ways, you say, my lady," interrupted the policeman.

"Oh, nothing to speak of," answered Lady Arabel, wincing. "Merely lighthearted ... too dretfully Bohemian ... ingenious, you know, in making experiments ... magnetism...."

"Experiments in Magnetism," spelt the policeman aloud into his notebook. "And 'oo left your 'ouse at nine forty-five P.M. last night?"

"I did," said the witch.

The policeman withered her once more with a glance.

"Lady 'Iggins, did you say your son left your 'ouse at nine forty-five P.M. last night?"

"Yes, but——"

"Thenk you, my lady."

"Thenk you, my lady," repeated the policeman coldly, and turned to Miss Ford.

"Could you identify the cherecter 'oo came into your committee room last Seturday?" he asked of her.

"No," she replied.

"Couldn't you say whether it seemed like a male or a female in disguise? Couldn't you mention any physical pecooliarity that struck you?"

"No," said Miss Ford.

"'Ave you no memory of last Seturday night?"

"No," said Miss Ford.

"I have," said the witch.

The policeman bridled. "I was addressing this 'ere lady, Miss M.M. Ford. Can you at least tell me, meddem, 'ow long you and the 'Iggins family 'ave been acquainted?"

"No," said Miss Ford.

"Eighteen years," said Lady Arabel.

The fumes from the fireplace were very strong indeed, but nobody called attention to them.

The policeman fixed his ominous gaze upon her for quite a minute before he wrote something in his notebook.

"Is Private Richard 'Iggins in town to-night?" he asked of Lady Arabel in a casual voice.

"I suppose so," she replied. "But he has such a dretful habit of disappearing...."

The policeman turned to the Mayor.

"Now, sir," he said. "Could you help me at all in——"

"Look here," said the witch, rising. "If you would only come along to my house in Mitten Island I can truly give you all the information you need. In fact, won't you come to supper with me? If some one will kindly lend me half-a-crown I will go on ahead and cook something."

Mr. Tovey mechanically produced a coin.

She left a room full of noise behind her.

The policeman, who was intoxicated with the strange fumes, said: "Hell. Hell. Hell."

Lady Arabel called in vain: "Angela, Angela, don't be so dretfully rash."

Mr. Tovey, now afflicted with a lock of hair in each eye, seized the policeman by the shoulder thinking to prevent him from jumping out of the window. "You fool," he shouted.

The Mayor slapped his thigh with a loud report. "Lawdy," he yelled. "She's a sport. She will 'ave 'er joke."

Miss MacBee laughed hysterically and very loudly.

Mr. Darnby Frere said "My word" rather cautiously several times, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He rather thought everybody was pulling his leg, but could not be sure.

THE HOUSE OF LIVING ALONE MOVES AWAY

"You'll 'ave to come to shore now," said the policeman, in the tone of one exhausted by long argument. "'Ere's some more parties wanting to cross." He turned to Richard. "Look 'ere, mate," he said. "I'm 'ere in the discharge of my dooty, and this ferryman is obstructin' me."

"Deah, deah," said Richard.

The crowd across the river, divining that a climax of defiance was being reached, shouted: "Yah, yah," in unison.

"Is either of you parties an 'ouse'older on Mitten Island?" asked the policeman of Sarah Brown and Richard.

"I am," said Richard, to his companion's surprise.

"Can you give me any information regarding the whereabouts of a cherecter known under any of these names: Iris 'Yde, T.B. Watkins, Hangela the Witch, possibly a male in female disguise, believed to conduct a general shop and boardin' 'ouse on Mitten Island?"

The policeman seemed to be troubled all the time by mosquitoes. He slapped his face and his ears and the back of his neck. He succeeded in killing one insect upon the bridge of his nose, and left it there by mistake, a strangely ignoble corpse. Sarah Brown suspected Richard of some responsibility for this untimely persecution.

"That party is charged with an offence against the Defence of the Realm Act," said the policeman,—"with being, although a civilian, in possession of a flying machine, and—er—obstructin' 'Is Majesty's enemies in the performance of their dooty."

"Oh deah, deah," said Richard. "Deah, deah, deah...."

Sarah Brown shook her head in reply, and Richard could say nothing but "Oh deah, deah...."

"May I take your name and 'ome address, and regimental number, please, young man," said the policeman, after a baffled pause.

"You shall 'ear of this foolery, my fine feller," said the distressed policeman, almost with a break in his voice. "Seein' as 'ow you refuse information, an' this ferryman thinks fit to defy the law, I 'ave no course open but to whistle for my mate, and leave 'im 'ere while I telephone for a police-boat."

He raised his whistle to his lips, but before he could blow it, the climax of this the least successful evening of his life, overwhelmed him. A shadow swept over the party, a large flying substance caught him full on the back of the neck and knocked him off the landing-stage into the river.

The witch on Harold her Broomstick landed on the spot vacated by the policeman.

"Oh, look what I've done, look what I've done ..." she exclaimed in an ecstasy of vexation. There was no need to tell anybody to look. Five hundred odd people were already doing so with enthusiasm. "Oh, what a dreadfully bad landing! Oh, Harold, how could you be so careless?"

"Don't be frightened," said the witch to the policeman. "We'll soon get you out, and the water's so shallow you can't sink. Talking of sinking, Richard, there's a question that puzzles me rather. If a rat got on to a submarine, how would it behave? A submarine, you see, is a sinking ship, and rats pride themselves so on knowing when to——"

Sarah Brown seized the witch by the shoulder. "Go away, witch," she said.

"How d'you mean—go away?" asked the witch. "I've only just this minute come."

"Go away, go away," was all that Sarah Brown could manage to repeat.

"Oh, very well," said the witch in her offended grown-up voice. "I can take a hint, I suppose, as well as anybody. I'm going."

She seated herself with an irritable flouncing movement on Harold's saddle, and flew away.

"Not ser fast, my fine feller," he roared, seeing Richard kissing the Horse Vivian on the nose, preparatory to riding away. "Don't you think for a minute I don't know 'oo's at the bottom of this."

"You don't know how tired I am of loud noises," said Richard, lifting one foot with dignity to the stirrup. "You don't know how bitterly I long to be still and hear things very far off ... but always there is an angry voice or the angry noise of guns in the way...."

He twined one finger negligently into the mane on the Horse Vivian's neck, and pulled himself slowly into the saddle. The policeman stood mysteriously impotent. Water dripped loudly from his clothes and punctuated Richard's quiet speech.

He shook the reins, and the Horse Vivian moved, treading quietly on the strip of grass that borders the path to the ferry.

"I am going to talk to my True Love now," said Richard, his voice fading away as he rode. "My True Love's voice is the only voice that is a little more beautiful to me than silence...."

The policeman seemed quieted, as he looked at Sarah Brown sitting, white and haggard with pain, on the river bank, with her arm round the shivering David.

"In a minute, in a minute, my One," she was saying to David. "We are nearly home now. We shall soon be quiet now."

There was always something startlingly inoffensive about Sarah Brown's appearance.

"I'd like to know 'oo was responsible for this houtrage, all the same," said the policeman.

Sarah Brown did not hear him, but she said: "Oh, I am so very sorry it happened. It was a pure accident, of course, but it is so terrible to see any one have an accident to his dignity. You must forget it quickly, you must run and find someone who knows you at your best, you must tell her a fine revised version of the incident, and then you will feel better."

"I'll look into the metter to-morrer," said the policeman. "You 'aven't 'eard the last of this, none of you 'aven't, not by a long chalk. I've a good mind to get the Mayor to read the Riot Act at you."

As Sarah Brown landed on Mitten Island she could not distinguish the faces of the waiting crowd, but she heard sharp anxious voices.

"They ain't goin' to get 'er, not if I knows it."

"She never speaks but kindness, the dear lamb."

"She's more of a saint than any in the Calendar."

"She gave my Danny a room in 'er house, and put 'eart into 'im after 'e lost 'is sight in the War."

"She's the good fairy of the Island."

"She grew all them Sweet Williams in my garden in one night, when I first come 'ere and was 'omesick for Devon."

"But the law can't catch 'er."

"The law has driven her away," said Sarah Brown. "There is no magic now on Mitten Island."

She staggered through the open door of the Shop. "This is Richard's house," she said to herself as she entered, and felt doubly alone because Richard was far away, riding to his True Love. She struck her last match, lit the lantern, and looked round. There was no sound in the house of Living Alone, she thought there would never again be any magic sound there to penetrate to her imprisoned hearing. The aprons hanging from the ceiling near the door flapped in the cold wind, and she thought they were like grey bats in a cave. The breeze blew out the open lantern. Ah, how desolate, how desolate....

Sarah Brown climbed up the short stairway, painful step by painful step, to her cell. She sat on her bed holding her throbbing side, and breathing with fearful caution. She looked at the empty grate. She put a cigarette in her mouth, the unconscious and futile answer of the Dweller Alone to that blind hunger for comfort. But she had no matches, and presently, dimly conscious that her groping for comfort had lacked result, she absently put another cigarette into her mouth, and then felt a fool.

She stared at the cold window. The sky seemed to be nailed carelessly to it by means of a crooked star or two.

These are the terrible nights of Living Alone, yet no real lover of that house and of that state would ever exchange one of those haunted and desert nights for a night spent watched, in soft warm places.

Sarah Brown was not long left alone that night to look at the strip of moonlight on the cold ashes of her fireplace. The Shop below shook suddenly with many footfalls, and the metallic officious barking of the Dog David rent the still air of her cell.

Sarah Brown was only aware of a vague and irksome disturbance. She groped to her door, opened it, and shouted miserably: "Go away, policeman, go away. She is not here."

Lady Arabel came up, flashing an electric torch.

"My dear, you look dretfully ill. Why look, you are trembling. Why look, your little dog is making your counterpane muddy. Don't be afraid for Angela, we are all here to try and help her."

"All here?"

"Yes, Meta and the Mayor and Mr. Tovey and Mr. Frere. Let me help you into bed, and then you shall tell me what you know of her. You have had a dretfully trying time."

"I am well," said Sarah Brown ungraciously. "You are none of you going to help the witch without me."

She led the way downstairs. Mr. Tovey and the Mayor were talking at the foot of the stairs, Mr. Frere was listening sardonically. As Sarah Brown went past them into the Shop, she smelt the unflower-like scent that always denoted the presence of Miss Ford. Sarah Brown herself was accompanied by nothing more seductive than a faint smell of gasoline, showing that her clothes had lately been home-cleaned. In the darkness of the Shop she saw Miss Ford stooping, trying to shut the big difficult drawer in which the witch kept her magic.

Miss Ford started and straightened her back. "Ah, Miss Brown.... I was just looking about...."

Sarah Brown sat gasping on the counter, and the rest of the party re-entered the Shop, bringing the lantern.

"How very absurd all this is," said Miss Ford nervously,—"taking such a great deal of trouble about a necessitous case."

"America is in my mind," said Lady Arabel. "If we could get her there. Anybody who has done anything silly goes to America. Indeed, if I remember rightly, America is entirely populated with fugitives from somewhere else. So dretfully confusing for the Red Indians. They say the story of the Tower of Babel was only a prophecy about the Woolworth Building—"

"You couldn't get a passport," said Mr. Darnby Frere, who was the only person present really conscious of sanity. "Only a miracle could produce a passport in these days, especially for a fugitive from justice."

Miss Ford moved instinctively behind the counter towards the open drawer full of ingredients for happiness.

"We must remember," added Mr. Frere, "that, after all, she did break the law. In fact I cannot for the life of me imagine why on earth we are all—"

"Oh, Darnby, do be sensible," said Miss Ford. "Of course we know it is wrong to break the law, but in this case—well, I myself should be the last to blame her."

"No, not the last," said Sarah Brown.

"What do you mean?"

"Certainly not the last. Probably not even the penultimate one. You flatter yourself."

"Why, surely some of you ladies, movin' in the 'ighest circles, knows of gentlemen in the Foreign Office that would do a little shut-eye job, for old times' sake," suggested the Mayor.

There was silence, while Miss Ford toyed gingerly with one of the paper packets out of the witch's drawer. Presently she said: "What about Richard?"

Lady Arabel showed sudden irritation. "There you go again, Meta; I have spoken to you of it again and again. It's Rrchud this and Rrchud that whenever anything in the least tahsome or out of the way happens. One would think you considered the poor boy a wizard."

"You needn't lose your temper, Arabel," said Miss Ford coldly. "I only meant that Richard might be useful, having so many friends, and such skill in ... chemistry...." As if unconsciously she tore off one corner of the packet of magic she held before adding: "And besides, as I have often told you, I believe Richard to have real Occult Power, which would give him a special interest in this case."

A tempest of restrained embarrassment arose.

"She's feverish," murmured Miss Ford, turning scarlet.

"My dear Sarah," said Lady Arabel tartly. "You are quite mistaken, and I must beg of you to be careful how you repeat idle gossip about my son. Rrchud is at his office. You know it is only open at night—one of Rrchud's quaint fancies."

"I will ring up his office," said Miss Ford, deciding to ignore Sarah Brown both now and in future. "Where is the telephone?"

"There is none," replied Sarah Brown. "This is the House of Living Alone."

Miss Ford was pouring a grain or two of the magic into her palm. "How very credulous people are," she said with a self-conscious smile. "If Thelma Bennett Watkins were here she would credit this powder with—"

Sarah Brown felt suddenly well. She trembled but was well. She jumped off the counter. "I will run across, if you like," she said, "and ring up Richard from the ferryman's house. He may have left his True Love now. I am not deaf on the telephone, and the ferryman won't admit strangers."

As she left, the smell of magic was getting stronger and stronger. Mr. Tovey, still impersonating Delilah in the corner, was approaching the more excitable passages of the song. Miss Ford was saying, "Really, Bernard...." Sarah Brown felt a slight misgiving.

The ferryman opened his door, and invited her genially to his telephone. He had been sitting at his table, surrounded by the snakes that for him took the place of a family. On the table was a bowl of milk from which a large bull-snake, in a gay Turkey-carpet design, was drinking. A yellow and black python lay coiled in several figures of eight in the armchair, and an intelligent-looking small dust-coloured snake with a broad nose and an active tongue leaned out of the ferryman's breast pocket.

Sarah Brown rang up Richard's office, and the over-refined voice of a young gentleman clerk answered her.

Mr. Higgins was not in the office.

Mr. Higgins had left particular word that if any one wanted him they were to be told that he had—er—gone to his True Love.

But any minor business matter connected with magic could be attended to in his absence. Mr. Higgins spending so much of his time on the battlefield at present, a good deal of the routine work had to be done in any case by the speaker, his confidential clerk.

How many passports?

"Two," said Sarah Brown. "One for my friend and one for me. A dog doesn't need one, does he—a British dog? I will book the berths to-morrow. I can pawn my—or rather, I can sell my War Loan."

As she hung up the receiver, the ferryman asked: "Are you having a party up at the Shop, in the superintendent's absence?"

"Not intentionally," replied Sarah Brown. "Why?"

"Well, I just wondered. There's a noise like a thousand mad gramophones playing backwards, coming from there."

Sarah Brown's misgivings returned like a clap of thunder. She rushed back to the Shop.

"Great Scott!" said Sarah Brown. You'll burn the place down. Look at that row of petticoats up there, catching fire already. What have you done with the Mayor?"

"We made him invisible by mistake," whispered Mr. Tovey. "But sh—sh, he doesn't know it yet."

"Nothing matters," said Miss Ford. "We are all going to America." And she continued her song, which was an extempore one about the sea.

"But that's no reason why you should burn the house down," said Sarah Brown.

The singers fell silent. Only the voice of the invisible Mayor could be heard, singing, "If those lips could only speak," in a loud tremulous voice, to the accompaniment of his own unseen stamping feet.

"You've been putting magic into that flame," said Sarah Brown distractedly. "I told you it was dangerous. Nothing will put magic out, except more magic. What will the witch say?"

"It doesn't matter what anybody says," said Miss Ford. "We are all going to America. No place and no person matters when I am not there. There are no places and no people existing where I am not. I have suspected it before, and now I am sure that everything is all a pretence, except me. Look how easy it was to dismiss that gross grocer from sight. He was just a bit of background. I have painted him out."

The drapery department on the ceiling was ablaze now, and flakes of ashy petticoat, and the metal frames of buttons, showered to the floor.

Sarah Brown rang up Richard's office, and Richard, who had a heroic and almost cinematic gift for being on hand at the right moments, answered her himself.

"Come at once," said Sarah Brown. "The House of Living Alone is on fire. Someone has been tampering with the magic drawer."

"Oh deah, deah," said Richard. "And this is such a busy night at the office too. Do you think it is really important? It is my house, you know."

"Very well, I'll come," said Richard.

As she stepped out of the door he arrived.

"I came by flash of lightning," he explained, smoothing his hair and readjusting his Bill Sykes service cap, in the manner of one who has moved swiftly. "The lightning service is getting very bad. I was held up for quite three-quarters of a second over Whitehall. There was some wireless war-news coming in, and the lightning had to let it pass. Now, what's all this fuss about, Sarah Brown?"

There was a crowd of delirious Mitten Islanders round the House of Living Alone. While Sarah Brown and Richard were about fifty yards away, a many-forked and enormous white flame suddenly wrapped the house about, like a hand clutching and crushing it.

"The faggots round the stake are lighted," said Richard. "But the witch has fled."

"Oh, Richard," said Sarah Brown. "Your mother and Miss Ford and——"

"Was mother in there?" asked Richard placidly. "Wonders will never cease. Well, well, it is fortunate that no magic of any sort could ever touch mother."

And indeed, as they pushed through the crowd, they saw all the recent occupants of the Shop arguing at the front gate.

"I didn't blow it," Mr. Tovey was saying in an aggrieved voice. "I was singing, not blowing."

"Well, all I know is that while you were on that high note something seemed to scatter the flames, and the drawer full of explosives caught fire," said Mr. Darnby Frere aggressively, flourishing his empty biscuit tin.

"It doesn't matter," said Miss Ford calmly. "We are all going across the sea to-morrow." She roused herself a little, and said to Mr. Frere with a smile: "You know, I inherit the sea tradition. My father commanded H.M.S. Indigestible in '84."

"I put it out," said Richard.

"I wonder whose house it is?" added Mr. Tovey, turning vaguely to face Richard.

"It is my house," said Richard.

They all discovered his presence.

"Your house, dear Rrchud?" exclaimed Lady Arabel. "Are you sure? I didn't know the Higginses had any house property on Mitten Island."

"They haven't now," replied Richard. "But never mind. It has always seemed to me that there were too many houses in the world. Most houses are traps into which everything enters, and out of which nothing comes. It always grieves me to see tradesmen pouring sustenance in at the back door, and no result or justification coming out of the front door. I often think that only the houses that men's bodies have deserted are really inhabited."

"You are right," said Richard. "To such as you, dear Meta, it was not a real house. It was the House of Living Alone, and only to people who live alone was it real. It is dark and deserted now, and levelled with the cold ground; it is as though it were a tent, being moved from its position to follow the fortunes of those dwellers alone who wander continually in silence up and down the world...."

He looked at Sarah Brown.

"Talking of wandering," said Miss Ford. "We are all going to America, Richard. Can you get us passports?"

"Certainly," agreed Richard. "To America, eh? A nice little trip for you all. America, you know, would be entirely magic, if it weren't for the Americans...."

"I have quite a circle of friends in New York," said Miss Ford, who seemed to be recovering from her nerve-storm.

"Beware," said Richard, "lest you all forget the magic of to-night, and change from adventurers to tourists."

"I never agreed to the plan at all," said Mr. Frere. "I shall be truly thankful to get to bed, and wake up to-morrow sober. I will never go out to tea in Kensington again if this is the result."

"I am going to America," said Mr. Tovey, fixing his innocent eyes, obscured by hair, upon Miss Ford.

"I am going to America," echoed the unseen Mayor from an unexpected direction. Nobody had yet dared to tell him of the misfortune that had overtaken him. "I'll give up this Mayor job to-morrer. Catch me stayin' be'ind if—oh, by the way, that reminds me——"

"I didn't need reminding," interrupted Sarah Brown. "It seems to me that everybody has forgotten why they came here. Please, Richard, do you know of a spell to find a missing person?"

"The witch," answered Sarah Brown.

Richard's face fell. "Oh, only the witch?" he said. "I can tell you where she is without any spell at all. She's with my True Love at Higgins Farm, helping—oh, by the way, mother, I forgot to tell you. You are a grandmother."

Richard continued to stroke her arm without comprehension. "Yes, mother, and Peony, my True Love, insists on calling him Elbert," he said. "Mother, listen, Elbert your faery grandson...."

THE DWELLER ALONE

Every minute upon the sea is a magic minute, but the voyage of the witch and Sarah Brown had been unmarked by any supernatural activities on the part of the witch. She had been more or less extinguished by the presence of five hundred Americans, not one of whom had ever heard the word "magic" used, except by advertisers in connection with their wares.

"Here we are," said the witch to Sarah Brown. "At least, I suppose this City on its Tiptoes is New York. Do you think I ought to call the attention of the Captain to that largish lady on our left, who seems to be marooned upon a rock, and signalling to us for help?"

"That is the Statue of Liberty," said three neighbouring Americans in chorus.

"How d'you mean—Liberty?" asked the witch.

The three Americans froze her with three glances.

"America is the home of Liberty," they said all together.

"How d'you mean—escape the Law? Didn't you know that all magic lives and thrives on the wrath of the Law? Have you forgotten our heroic tradition of martyrdom and the stake? Isn't the world tame enough already? What do you want Magic to become? A branch of the Civil Service?"

"I spent all I had in bringing you here," said Sarah Brown. "I left all I loved to bring you here. I am as if dead in England now. Nobody there will ever think of me again, except as a thing that has been heard the last of."

"Ah, witch, don't leave me, don't leave me like this, ill and bewildered and so far from home...."

"How can you ever be far from home, you, a dweller in the greatest home of all. Did you think you had destroyed the House of Living Alone? Did you think you could escape from it?"

The dock was reached. Sarah Brown collected David her Dog, and Humphrey her Suit-case. Hers was a very wieldy family. An official asked her something, using one side of his mouth only to do so, in the alarming manner of American officials.

"I cannot hear you," said Sarah Brown. "I am stone deaf."

And she stepped over the threshold of the greater House of Living Alone.

THE END

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