ne but Christine
since his mother died?

He had not done it. It had been too difficult to yield. But he stood
there, dreaming, with his hot eyes pressed into his hands, whilst out
of the magic quiet rose wave after wave of enchantment, engulfing him.

2

They agreed that Francey had not boasted about her hill. It stood up
boldly out of the rolling sea of field and common land and was
tree-crowned, with primroses shining amongst the young grass. From its
summit they could see toy villages and church, spires and motors and
char-a-bancs running like alarmed insects along the white, winding
lanes. But apparently no one saw the hill. No one came to it. Since
it was everything that picnic parties demanded in the way of a hill, it
was only reasonable to accept Francey's theory that it was not really
there at all--or at most only there for her particular convenience.

They spread their table-cloth on its slope and under the dappled
shadows of the half-fledged trees, with Christine presiding on the high
ground. Her wispy grey hair fluttered out from under the wide black
hat, and she looked pretty and pathetic, with her shabby black bag and
her old umbrella, like a witch, as Howard said, who had been caught
whilst absent-mindedly gathering toad-stools and carried here in
triumph to bless their mortal festivity.

"The umbrella keeps off rain," he explained mysteriously, "and besides
that, it's a necromantic Handley-Page which might fly off with her at
any minute. When you see it opening, stand clear and hold on to
yourselves."

He made a limerick on this particular fancy. It was a very bad
limerick, as bad, probably, as his theories on pyridine and its
relation to the alkaloids which had floored him in his last exam.; but
the Gang applauded enthusiastically, and drank to Christine out of mugs
of beer. Unlicked and cynical as they were, they seemed to have a
chivalrous tenderness for her. And she was at home among them--silent,
smiling wistfully down upon their commonplace eccentricities, as though
through the mist of her coming blindness they were somehow lovable.

They ate outrageously of fearsome things. Yet over her third meringue
Connie Edwards broke down with lamentations for the lost powers of
youth.

"I can remember eating five of 'em," she said, "and coming home to a
tea of winkles and bloater paste. Oh Gawd! I'll be in my grave before
I can turn round."

She had been from the start in an unu