“Witch,” said Sarah Brown, “I have got to say something.”

“Oh, have you?” said the witch, a little disappointed at being interrupted.  “Oh, well, I can sympathise, I know what that feels like.  Get on and say it.”

The Dog David, who was really a good and attentive son to Sarah Brown, came and laid his chin, with an exaggerated look of interest, on her knee-cap.

“Is it any use,” said Sarah Brown, “fighting against the Habits in the world, there are so many.  Who set these strange and senseless deceivers at large?  Religion which has forgotten ecstasy....  Law which has forgotten justice....  Charity which has forgotten love....  Surely magic has suffered at the stake for saner ideals than these?”

“Why, of course,” said the witch impatiently.  “Magic generally suffered because it was so sane.  I thought everybody knew that.”

“All habits.  All habits,” chanted Sarah Brown.  “What is this Charity, this clinking of money between strangers, and when did Charity cease to be a comforting and secret thing between one friend and another?  Does Love make her voice heard through a committee, does Love employ an almoner to convey her message to her neighbour?”

“Not that I know of,” sighed the witch.  “Sarah Brown, how long do you want me to keep quiet, while you say things that everybody surely knows?”

But Sarah Brown went on.  “The real Love knows her neighbour face to face, and laughs with him and weeps with him, and eats and drinks with him, so that at last, when his black day dawns, she may share with him, not what she can spare, but all that she has.”

The Dog David grunted a little, by way of rather dubious applause.  Sarah Brown, with her own voice printed loud and stark upon the retina of her hearing, felt a little abashed.  But presently she added in a whisper:  “Listen.  I am a spy.  I am a lover of specially recommended neighbours only.  I am here to help to give the black cloud Tyranny a rather dirty silver lining.  I am the False Steward, in the interest of the Superfluously Comfortable.  My Masters sit upon the King’s Highway, taking toll in bitterness and humiliation from every traveller along that road.  For surely comfort is every man’s heritage, surely the happy years should come to every man—­not doled out, not meanly dependent on his moral orthodoxy, but as his right.  The fat philanthropist is a debtor, but he behaves like a creditor; he distributes obligations with his gold, yet he has no right to the gold he gives.  He makes his brother beg upon his knees for the life and the health and the dear opportunity that should have been that brother’s birthright.”

“You are possessed, dear Sarah Brown,” said the witch.  “Don’t be frightened, it will soon pass off.  I knew a girl who had an attack very much like this; while she was under its influence she made up a psalm pretty nearly as good as one of David’s.  Her mother was much alarmed about her.  But she recovered quite quickly, except that she left her job as typist in a mind-improving institute and went to sea as a stewardess.”