u how this is done,
but it is something like treading water when you are swimming, and hawks
do it extremely well.

"Yes, I daresay," said Cyril, though no one had spoken. "But stealing is
stealing even if you've got wings."

"Do you really think so?" said Jane briskly. "If you've got wings you're
a bird, and no one minds birds breaking the commandments. At least,
they may _mind_, but the birds always do it, and no one scolds them or
sends them to prison."

It was not so easy to perch on a plum-tree as you might think, because
the rainbow wings were so _very_ large; but somehow they all managed to
do it, and the plums were certainly very sweet and juicy.

Fortunately, it was not till they had all had quite as many plums as
were good for them that they saw a stout man, who looked exactly as
though he owned the plum-trees, come hurrying through the orchard gate
with a thick stick, and with one accord they disentangled their wings
from the plum-laden branches and began to fly.

The man stopped short, with his mouth open. For he had seen the boughs
of his trees moving and twitching, and he had said to himself, "Them
young varmint--at it again!" And he had come out at once, for the lads
of the village had taught him in past seasons that plums want looking
after. But when he saw the rainbow wings flutter up out of the
plum-tree he felt that he must have gone quite mad, and he did not like
the feeling at all. And when Anthea looked down and saw his mouth go
slowly open, and stay so, and his face become green and mauve in
patches, she called out--

"Don't be frightened," and felt hastily in her pocket for a
threepenny-bit with a hole in it, which she had meant to hang on a
ribbon round her neck, for luck. She hovered round the unfortunate
plum-owner, and said, "We have had some of your plums; we thought it
wasn't stealing, but now I am not so sure. So here's some money to pay
for them."

She swooped down toward the terror-stricken grower of plums, and slipped
the coin into the pocket of his jacket, and in a few flaps she had
rejoined the others.

The farmer sat down on the grass, suddenly and heavily.

[Illustration: The farmer sat down on the grass suddenly and heavily]

"Well--I'm blessed!" he said. "This here is what they call delusions, I
suppose. But this here threepenny"--he had pulled it out and bitten
it,--"_that's_ real enough. Well, from this day forth I'll be a better
man. It's the kind of thing to sober