th pork chops and apple sauce, a duck, and a spotted
currant pudding. Also a large can.

'You pay me my fare,' he said threateningly, and looked down at the
mound, muttering again about his tea.

'We'll take another cab,' said Cyril with dignity. 'Give me change for a
sovereign, if you please.'

But the cabman, as it turned out, was not at all a nice character. He
took the sovereign, whipped up his horse, and disappeared in the stream
of cabs and omnibuses and wagons, without giving them any change at all.

Already a little crowd was collecting round the party.

'Come on,' said Robert, leading the wrong way.

The crowd round them thickened. They were in a narrow street where many
gentlemen in black coats and without hats were standing about on the
pavement talking very loudly.

'How ugly their clothes are,' said the Queen of Babylon. 'They'd be
rather fine men, some of them, if they were dressed decently, especially
the ones with the beautiful long, curved noses. I wish they were dressed
like the Babylonians of my court.'

And of course, it was so.

The moment the almost fainting Psammead had blown itself out every man
in Throgmorton Street appeared abruptly in Babylonian full dress.

All were carefully powdered, their hair and beards were scented and
curled, their garments richly embroidered. They wore rings and armlets,
flat gold collars and swords, and impossible-looking head-dresses.

A stupefied silence fell on them.

'I say,' a youth who had always been fair-haired broke that silence,
'it's only fancy of course--something wrong with my eyes--but you chaps
do look so rum.'

'Rum,' said his friend. 'Look at YOU. You in a sash! My hat! And your
hair's gone black and you've got a beard. It's my belief we've been
poisoned. You do look a jackape.'

'Old Levinstein don't look so bad. But how was it DONE--that's what I
want to know. How was it done? Is it conjuring, or what?'

'I think it is chust a ver' bad tream,' said old Levinstein to his
clerk; 'all along Bishopsgate I haf seen the gommon people have their
hants full of food--GOOT food. Oh yes, without doubt a very bad tream!'

'Then I'm dreaming too, Sir,' said the clerk, looking down at his legs
with an expression of loathing. 'I see my feet in beastly sandals as
plain as plain.'

'All that goot food wasted,' said old Mr Levinstein. A bad tream--a bad
tream.'

The Members of the Stock Exchange are said to be at all times a noisy
lot. But the