e club again."

"The thing pulled me up short. By Jove!" I said, faintly. "Yes. Of
course--you will."

He did. He does. There he sits behind me now, stuffing--as I live!--a
third go of buttered teacake. And no one in the whole world knows--except
his housekeeper and me---that he weighs practically nothing; that he is a
mere boring mass of assimilatory matter, mere clouds in clothing,
_niente, nefas_, the most inconsiderable of men. There he sits
watching until I have done this writing. Then, if he can, he will waylay
me. He will come billowing up to me...

He will tell me over again all about it, how it feels, how it doesn't
feel, how he sometimes hopes it is passing off a little. And always
somewhere in that fat, abundant discourse he will say, "The secret's
keeping, eh? If any one knew of it--I should be so ashamed... Makes
a fellow look such a fool, you know. Crawling about on a ceiling and all
that..."

And now to elude Pyecraft, occupying, as he does, an admirable strategic
position between me and the door.

XXIX.

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.

"