at with David in the bouncing ferry-boat, there had
been a panting rustling noise behind her, and Harold the Broomstick had
swept a little packet of sandwiches into her lap. He had disappeared
before she had been able to do more than turn over in her mind the
question whether or no broomsticks ever expect to be tipped.

Now I could not say with certainty whether the witch, in making up this
packet of sandwiches, had included the contents of one of her own little
packets of magic. Sarah Brown would have been very susceptible to such a
drug; her mind was always on the brink of innocent intoxication. Perhaps
she was only half a woman, so that half a joy could make her heart reel
and sing, and half a sorrow break it. She was defenceless against
impressions, and too many impressions make the heart very tired.
Therefore, I think, she was a predestined victim of magic, and it seems
unlikely that the witch should have missed such an opportunity to
dispense spells.

After the first bite at the first sandwich, Sarah Brown was conscious of
a Joke somewhere. This feeling in itself was akin to delirium, for there
are no two facts so remote as a Joke and a Charity Society. The office
table confronted Sarah Brown, and she wondered that she could ever have
seen it as anything but a butt. She wondered how she had been able to
sit daily in front of that stout and earnest index without poking it in
the ribs and making a fool of it. The office clock, alone among clocks,
had never played a practical joke. The sad fire below it, conscious of a
Mission, was overloaded with coal and responsibility.

The second bite, ten minutes later, caused Sarah Brown to be tired and
distrustful of a room that had no smile. Her eyes turned to seek the
hidden Joke beyond the limits of that lamentable room. There was a
spring-coloured tree in the school-ground opposite, and above the tree a
rough blue and silver sky contradicted all the doctrines preached in
offices. There was in the wind something of the old raw simplicity and
mirth that always haunts the sea, and penetrates inland only on rare
spring days. The high white clouds crossed the sky like galleons, like
old stories out of the innocent Eden-like past of the sea, before she
learnt the ways of steam and secret killing. Old names of ships came to
Sarah Brown's mind ... Castle-of-Comfort ... Cloud-i'-the-Sun....

"I am doing wrong," said Sarah Brown. She took a third bite.

And then she felt the spi