But at present it was asleep, its
saturnine and rather wistful face rested upon one scaly paw.

Sarah Brown was uncertain what to do, but the Dog David took the matter
into his own paws by mistake. He had just met one of the castle dogs,
one of those tremulous-tailed creatures who spend themselves in a rather
pathetic effort to sustain an imaginary reputation for humour. David
retorted to this dog's first facetious onslaught with a kindly quip,
they trod on each other once or twice with extravagant gestures, and
then parted hysterically, each supposing himself to be pursued by the
other. It was then that David tripped over the dragon's barbed tail.
David squeaked, and the dragon awoke. It uncoiled itself suddenly like
a broken spring.

"Gosh," it said. "Asleep again! I was waiting for you, and the sun on my
back always makes me sleepy. I am the foreman. Higgins telephoned that
you were coming."

It preceded her through the little green archway that led to the farm.
The sight reminded Sarah Brown of watching from Golders Green Tube
Station the train one has just missed dive into the tunnel. She
followed.

On the other side of the archway the whole view of the plain called
Higgins Farm met the adventurer. The farm-buildings were heaped
graciously together on a little wave in the sea of ploughed fields.
Except for two pale ricks in their midst, they exactly matched their
surroundings, they were plastered dark red, and thatched with very old
green and brown thatch. Beyond the buildings was a little wood, its
interior lighted up with bluebells, and this wood merged into an
orchard, where a white pony and an auburn pig strove apparently to eat
the same blade of grass. The various sections of the farm land lay
mapped out in different intensities of brown, very young green, and
maturer green, and each section was dotted with people. They seemed
small people even from a distance, and, as Sarah Brown advanced at the
tail of the dragon, she saw that the workers were all indeed under
ordinary human size. The tallest, a man guiding a miniature plough
behind a tall horse, might have reached Sarah Brown's shoulder. None of
them seemed hard at work, they stood talking in little groups. One group
as they passed it was trafficking in cigarette cards. "I want to get my
Gold Scale set of English Kings complete," a voice was saying
tragically. "Has nobody got Edward the Confessor?" None of them took any
notice of the foreman.

"I'm a