ced shimmering in its noon green.

All the workers at the approach of Richard were working busily, bent
ostentatiously in the form of hairpins up and down their rows. The
dragon was rippling anxiously along at the heels of the white horse; a
helpless hoping for the best expressed itself in every spike along his
spine.

"I don't really know why she's idling like that," Sarah Brown heard him
say in his breathy pathetic voice. "I left her hard at work. They're all
the same when my back's turned. A fellow needs to have eyes at the tip
of his tail."

"Are you suffering from that Leverhulme six-hour-working-day sort of
feeling?" asked Richard politely of Sarah Brown, in the manner of an
advertisement of a cure for indigestion, as he approached. "I think it's
just splendid how receptive and progressive working people are in these
days."

"I was meditating suicide," replied Sarah Brown candidly, if faintly. "I
am a stricken and useless parasite on the face of your fine earth. But
my hoe is too blunt."

"I have a pocket-knife with three blades I could lend you," said
Richard, slapping himself enquiringly over several pockets. "Or would
you rather try a natty little spell I thought of this morning while I
was shaving. I think any one stricken might find it rather useful."

"Ah, give it to me. Give it to me," said Sarah Brown.

The pain was like a wave breaking upon her, carrying her away from her
safe shore of shadow, to be lost in seething and suffocating seas
without rest. Her eyes felt dried up with fever, and whenever she shut
them, the darkness was filled with a jumble of nauseating squares in
blue upon a mustard-coloured background. The smell of beans was
terrible.

Richard fumbled with something very badly folded up in newspaper. He
also tried ineffectively to light a match by wiping it helplessly
against his riding breeches. He seemed to have none of the small skill
in details that comes to most people before they grow up. He did
everything as if he were doing it for the first time.

"I had nothing but the _Morning Post_ to wrap it in," he murmured. "I'm
afraid that may have spoilt the magic a little."

It was the dragon finally who produced the necessary light. After
watching Richard with the anxious sympathy of one ineffectual for
another, it said: "Let me," and kindly breathed out a little flame,
which set the packet aflare for a moment.

The ashes fluttered down from Richard's hand among the beans, and a