"Love----," began Richard in a loud exalted voice, and then suddenly a searchlight glared diagonally across the end of the Ride, over Mitten Island, and quenched the magic of the moment.

"Sorry," said Richard. "I thought I was talking to my True Love."

"I'm sorry you weren't," said Sarah Brown, as they emerged from the Forest. "I mean, I'm sorry it was only me you were talking to."

CHAPTER VIII

THE REGRETTABLE WEDNESDAY

"What a very singular thing," said the Mayor, meeting the witch towards three o'clock in the afternoon, as she came down the Broad Walk towards Kensington, having slept invisibly among the daffodils for nearly twelve hours. "A really very singular thing. 'Tisn't once in five years I visit these parts, and now I'm here I meet the very person I was thinkin' about." He winked.

"It's almost like magic, isn't it," said the witch, winking busily in return.

"Well, I've done what you told me to," said the Mayor.

"What was that?"

"You will 'ave your joke," he retorted indulgently. "Pretending not to know, indeed. I've done what you told me the other day when you came to that committee with your cat. I thought it over--I'm not a proud man, never above takin' a hint,--and I admitted to meself that what you said was fair about makin' money. Some'ow I never thought but what money was the first thing to make in business. To tell you the truth, I always thought it rather a feather in my cap that I never took advantage of Brown Borough customers in selling adulterated goods, for--Lawdy--they'd swallow anythink. It's different with your business, bein' in an 'igher-cla.s.s locality. 'Igh prices, I thought, was only natural. Make 'ay while the sun shines was my motter, and I says to meself there was no reason why this war should make _everyone_ un'appy. As for lookin' at the grocery business as a trust from G.o.d, like you said, I never dremp of such a thing, although I've bin to Chapel regular for ten years. But I see now there was a lot in what you said, and when I come to think of it, there was no need to make such a terrible lot of extra hay, 'owever much the sun might be shinin'. When you put it like that, I couldn't say why I was so set on more money, 'aving quite enough. Well, I says to meself, after shutting meself up to think it out, like you said, 'ere am I giving up all my life an' all my jolly days an' 'olidays, an' I'm d.a.m.ned if I know what for. For money,--just money stewin' in its own juice in a bank,--not money I can use. Well, everybody's trained so, I'm thinkin'. Anyway I took it friendly of you to put it so delicate, so fanciful as you did, so as them charity ladies didn't smell a rat. I appreciated that, an' thought the more of what you said. I'm not a proud man."

"You're just proud enough," said the witch. "You're a darling. If ever I can help you in a business way, let me know. If you want to start a side line, for instance, in Happiness, I can give you a tip where to get it wholesale, within limits. It'd go like wildfire in the Brown Borough, if you put in an ounce or two, gratis of course, with every order."

"You will 'ave your joke," murmured the Mayor. "But I like it in you.

I'm a man that never takes a joke amiss. Let's go for a walk together."

"No," said the witch. "I am so hungry that my ribs are beginning to bend inwards. I must go and have sausages and mash and two apple dumplings."

They found themselves presently seated at the marble-topped table of an A.B.C. After an interval that could hardly be accurately described as presently, sausages and mash dawned on the horizon, and the witch waved her fork rudely at it as it approached.

"Mashed is splendid stuff to sculp with," she said, roughing in a ground plan upon her plate with the sure carelessness of the artist. "This is going to be an ivory castle built upon a rock in a gla.s.sy sea. The sausage is the dragon guarding it, and this little crumb of bread is the emprisoned princess, a dull but sterling creature----"

"Look 'ere, Miss Watkins," interrupted the Mayor. "I'm not as a rule an impulsive man, and I don't want to startle you----"

"How d'you mean startle me?" asked the witch. "You haven't startled me at all. But the fact is, I never have been much of a person for getting married, thank you very much. I'm an awful bad house-keeper. And I _do_ so much enjoy having no money."

"Well, I'm blessed," exclaimed the Mayor. "You're a perfect witch, I declare." He laid a large meat-like hand upon hers. "But you know, you can't put the lid on me so easy as that. Ever since you came into that old committee room I saw there was something particular about you, something that you an' me 'ad in common. I'm not speakin' so much of us bein' in the same line of business. Some'ow--oh, 'ang it all, let's get out of this and take a taxi. I'm not a kissing man, but----"

He seemed very persistent in applying negatived adjectives to himself.

It was not his fault if the world failed to grasp exactly what he was, or rather exactly what he was not.

"I have often wondered," interrupted the witch, "talking of kissing--what would happen if two snipes wanted to kiss each other? It would have to be at such awfully long range, wouldn't it. Or----"

"Come off it," ordered the Mayor irritably. "What about gettin' out of this and----"

"Don't you think this is becoming rather a tiresome scene?" said the witch. "Somehow over luscious, don't you think? I wish those apple dumplings would hurry up."

"'Ere, miss," said the Mayor ungraciously to a pa.s.sing whirlwind. "'Urry them dumplings."

"'Urry them dumplings," echoed the whirlwind to a little hole in the wall.

The witch had a silly vision of two distressed dumplings, like dilatory chorus girls, mad with the nightmare feeling of not being dressed in time, hearing their cue called in a heartless voice from the inexorable sky, desperately applying the last dab of flour to their imperfect complexions. But the witch found no fault with them when they came. She gave them her whole attention for some minutes.

"Well, well," she said, laying down her fork and spoon, "that's good. I feel awfully grown-up, having had a proposal. When real girls ask me now how many I've had, I shall be able to say One. But I met a girl the other day who had had six. She had six photographs, but she called them scalps. If you would give me your photograph I could label it A Scalp, and hang it in the Shop. That would be very grown-up, wouldn't it?"

"You will 'ave your joke," said the Mayor in a hollow voice. "I never met such a gurl as you for a bit of fun. I don't believe you've got any 'eart."

There, of course, he was right. A heart is a sort of degree conferred by Providence on those who have pa.s.sed a certain examination. Magic people are only freshmen in our college, and it is useless for us--secure in the possession of many learned letters after our names--to despise them.

They will become sophisticated in due course.

"How d'you mean--heart?" asked the witch therefore. "I've still got an awful hunger inside me, if that's anything to do with it. I'll tell you what. It's Wednesday. Let's go and call on Miss Ford. She might have gra.s.sy sandwiches."

There was a most abrupt and disturbing draught in Miss Ford's sleek and decorous flat as the witch and the Mayor entered it. The serenity of the night and the morning had been suddenly obliterated, and Kensington suffered a gust or two of gritty wind which blew the babies home from the Gardens, and kept all the window-gazers in the High Street on the alert with their fingers on the triggers of their umbrellas.

But no rain fell. Rain cannot fall in this book of fine weather.

The draught that intruded into the flat ruffled the neat hair of five persons, Miss Ford herself, Lady Arabel Higgins, Miss Ivy MacBee, Mr.

Bernard Tovey, and Mr. Darnby Frere.

Miss MacBee always seemed to be seated on tenterhooks, even in the most comfortable of chairs. Her Spartan spine never consented graciously to the curves of cushions. She had smooth padded hair and smooth padded manners, and her eyes were magnified by thick pince-nez to a cow-like size. Most people, especially most women, were instinctively sorry for her, because she always looked a little clever and very uncomfortable.

Mr. Bernard Tovey was a blunt-nosed beaming person. He leaned forward abruptly whenever he spoke, thereby swinging a lock of hair into his right eye. He agreed so heartily with everything that was said that people who addressed him were left with the happy impression that they had said something Rather Good. This habit, combined with the fact that he never launched an independent remark, had given him the reputation of being one of the best talkers in Kensington.

Mr. Darnby Frere was the editor of an advanced religious paper called _I Wonder_, but he never wondered really. He knew almost everything, and therefore, while despising the public for knowing so little, he encouraged it to continue wondering, so that he might continue despising and instructing it.

Now it was an almost unprecedented thing for two members of the small trades-man cla.s.s to come into Miss Ford's drawing-room, especially on a Wednesday. The utmost social mingling of the cla.s.ses that those walls had ever seen was the moment when Miss Ford asked the electric light man what he thought of the war. The electric light man's reply had been quoted in the dialect on two or three of the following Wednesdays, as a proof of Miss Ford's daring intimacy with men in Another Station of Life. Really it would have been simpler, though of course not so picturesque, to have quoted it direct from its original source, _John Bull_, the electric light man's Bible.

The entrance of the witch and the Mayor was to a certain extent a crisis, but Miss Ford kept her head, and her three friends, though grasping at once the extraordinary situation, did not give way to panic.

"Well, well, well," said the Mayor, looking round and breathing very loudly. "This is a cosy little nook you've got 'ere."

He was not at all at his ease, but being a business man, and being also blessed with a peculiarly inexpressive face, he was successfully dissembling his discomfort.

For it had happened that the lift had been one of those lifts that can do no wrong, the kind that the public is indulgently allowed to work by itself. And the Mayor, looking upon this fact as specially planned by a propitious G.o.d of love, had tried to kiss the witch as they shot up the darkened shaft. If I remind you that the witch was still accompanied by her broomstick, Harold, a creature of unreasoning fidelity, I need hardly describe the scene further. The Mayor stepped out of the lift with a tingling sc.r.a.ped face, and if he had possessed enough hair on his head, it would have been on end. As it was, when the lift stopped, he retrieved his hat from the floor with a frank oath, and, as the witch had at once rung the bell of Miss Ford's flat, he instinctively followed her across that threshold.

She looked round in the hall, and said with a friendly smile: "I'm afraid Harold gets a bit irritable sometimes. I often tell him to count ten before he lets himself go, but he forgets. Did he hurt you?"

I am afraid the angry Mayor did not give Harold credit for much initiative.

"Kissing is such a funny habit, isn't it," said the witch briskly as she shook Miss Ford's hand. "I wonder who decided in the first place which forms of contact should express which forms of emotion. I wonder----"

She interrupted herself as her eyes fell on some green sandwiches which were occupying the third floor of a wicker Eiffel Tower beside Miss Ford. "Oh how gorgeous," she said. "Do you know, I've only had two meals in the last two days."

n.o.body present had ever been obliged to miss a meal, so this statement seemed to every one to be a message from another world.

"You must tell us about all your experiences, my dear Miss Watkins,"

said Miss Ford, leading the witch towards a chair by the fire. The witch sat down suddenly cross-legged on the hearth-rug, leaving her rather embarra.s.sed hostess in the air, so to speak, towering rigidly above her.