bel, Sarah Brown, and Richard crossed the churchyard together.

"Oh, my dears, look," said Lady Arabel. "How too too dretful, that bomb
fell quite close to us. Do look how it has disturbed the graves...."

CHAPTER VI

AN AIR RAID SEEN FROM ABOVE

The moonlight lay like cream upon the pavement when the witch and
Harold her broomstick left the Higgins' doorstep. London was a still
Switzerland in silver and star-grey, unblotted by people. There was a
hint of pale green about the moonlight, and the lamps with their dim
light downcast were like daffodils in faery fields.

The witch mounted. Harold, who was every inch a thoroughbred and very
highly strung, trembled beneath her, but not with fear. They reached
Piccadilly Circus with supernatural speed, and flashed across it. The
sound of people singing desultorily while taking shelter in the Tube
floated up to them. Here the witch said "Yoop" to Harold, and he reared
and shot upwards, narrowly missing the statue of One In A Bus-catching
Attitude, which marks the middle of the Circus.

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.

There were a few clouds wandering about among the stars, and to one of
these the witch and her faithful Harold repaired. A cloud gives quite
reasonable support to magic people, and most witches and wizards have
discovered the delight of paddling knee-deep about those quicksilver
continents. They wander along shining and changing valleys under a most
ardent sky; they climb the purple thunderclouds, or launch the first
snowflake of a blizzard; they spring from pink stepping-stone to pink
stepping-stone of clouds each no bigger than a baby's hand, across great
sunsets. Often when in London I am battling with a barrage of rain, or
falling over unseen strangers into gutters during fogs, I think happily
of the sunlit roof of cloud above my head, and of the witches and
wizards, lying on their backs with their coats off, among cloud-meadows
in a glory of perfect summer and sun.

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