his gyrations and
trying to attract his attention, on a motor car and in his pyjamas--he
had caught sight of the ascent when pulling up the blind of his bedroom
window--equipped, among other things, with a film camera that was
subsequently discovered to be jammed. And Filmer was lying on the
billiard table in the green pavilion with a sheet about his body.

2. THE MAGIC SHOP

I had seen the Magic Shop from afar several times; I had passed it once
or twice, a shop window of alluring little objects, magic balls, magic
hens, wonderful cones, ventriloquist dolls, the material of the basket
trick, packs of cards that LOOKED all right, and all that sort of
thing, but never had I thought of going in until one day, almost without
warning, Gip hauled me by my finger right up to the window, and so
conducted himself that there was nothing for it but to take him in. I
had not thought the place was there, to tell the truth--a modest-sized
frontage in Regent Street, between the picture shop and the place where
the chicks run about just out of patent incubators, but there it was
sure enough. I had fancied it was down nearer the Circus, or round the
corner in Oxford Street, or even in Holborn; always over the way and
a little inaccessible it had been, with something of the mirage in its
position; but here it was now quite indisputably, and the fat end of
Gip's pointing finger made a noise upon the glass.

"If I was rich," said Gip, dabbing a finger at the Disappearing Egg,
"I'd buy myself that. And that"--which was The Crying Baby, Very
Human--"and that," which was a mystery, and called, so a neat card
asserted, "Buy One and Astonish Your Friends."

"Anything," said Gip, "will disappear under one of those cones. I have
read about it in a book.

"And there, dadda, is the Vanishing Halfpenny--, only they've put it
this way up so's we can't see how it's done."

Gip, dear boy, inherits his mother's breeding, and he did not propose to
enter the shop or worry in any way; only, you know, quite unconsciously
he lugged my finger doorward, and he made his interest clear.

"That," he said, and pointed to the Magic Bottle.

"If you had that?" I said; at which promising inquiry he looked up with
a sudden radiance.

"I could show it to Jessie," he said, thoughtful as ever of others.

"It's less than a hundred days to your birthday, Gibbles," I said, and
laid my hand on the door-handle.

Gip made no answer, but his grip tightened