, which disintegrated. There was no more
foot-hold on it; the tide had come up and submerged it.

Harold the Broomstick was crippled, he stumbled as he flew, sometimes he
dropped a score of feet, and span. He did stunts by mistake.

They had not strength enough between them to get home. They made a
forced landing in the silver loneliness of Kensington Gardens. It was a
fortunate place, for there is much magic there. Wherever there are
children who pretend, there grows a little magic in the air, and
therefore the wind of Kensington Gardens thrills with enchantment, and
the Round Pond, full of much pretence of great Armadas, crossed and
re-crossed with the abiding wakes of ships full of treasure and romance,
is a blessed lake to magic people.

The witch bathed Harold, her broomstick, in the Round Pond. He evidently
felt its healing quality at once, for after the first minute of
immersion, he swam about exultantly, and shook drops full of moonlight
out of his mane.

The bugles sounded All-clear in many keys all round the ear's horizon;
their sound matched the waning moonlight.

The witch bathed her shoulder, and then she found her way to a little
quiet place she knew of, where no park-keeper ever looks, a place where
secret and ungardened daffodils grow in springtime, a place where all
the mice and birds play unafraid, because no cat can find the way
thither. You can see the Serpentine from that place, and the bronze
shadows under its bridge, but no houses, and no railways, and no signs
of London.

Here the witch made a little fire, and leaned three sticks together over
it; she lighted the fire with her finger-tip and hung over it the little
patent folding cauldron, which she always carried on a chatelaine
swinging from her belt. And she made a charm of daisy-heads, and
spring-smelling grasses, and the roots of unappreciated weeds, and the
mosses that cover the tiny faery cliffs of the Serpentine. Over the
mixture she shook out the contents of one of her little paper packets of
magic. All this she boiled over her fire for many hours, sitting beside
it in the silver darkness, with her knees drawn up and her hands clasped
in front of them. The trees sprang up into the moonlight like dark
fountains from the pools of their own shadows. Little shreds of cloud
flowed wonderfully across the sky. There was no sound except the sound
of the water, like an uncertain player upon a little instrument. The
charm was still unfinish