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."

"If you'd try your best not to be clever I'd give you a job," said
Richard, who with a rather tiresome persistence was now levitating the
chicken, so that, invisibly suspended at a height of eighteen inches
above the middle of the table, it dripped gravy into a bowl of
daffodils. "In fact I will give you a job. I have a farm called Higgins
Farm, just about half-way between sea-level and sky-level. You can be a
Hand, if you like, at sixpence an hour. You can get there from Mitten
Island every day quite easily, and I'll tell you how. It's just the
other side of the Parish of Faery, on your right as you reach the
mainland from Mitten Island. You follow the Green Ride through the
Enchanted Forest, until you come to the Castle where the Youngest
Prince--who rescued one of the Fetherstonhaugh girls from a giant and
married her--used to live. The Castle's to let now; she is an ambulance
driver in Salonika, and he a gunner--just got his battery, I believe.
Below the outer wall of the Castle you will see the Daisified Path, and
that leads you straight to the gate of Higgins Farm, under a clipped box
archway."

"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.

"My dears," exclaimed Lady Arabel, much relieved to hear that this new
sensation was not supernatural. "How too dretfully tahsome with the
sweet and the savoury still to come. Do you know, I promised
Pinehurst--my husband--never to remain in this house during an air-raid.
It was his own fault, the dear thing; he had a craze for windows; this
house has more glass space than wall, I think, and Pinehurst, in his
spare time, used always to be making plans for squeezing in more
windows. Our room is like a conservatory--so dretfully embarrassing. So
I always take my knitting across the road to the crypt of St.
Sebastian's, and I'm sure you won't mind coming too. You might have
brought a box of spellicans, o