To this discussion, and indeed to all the enchantments, Lady Arabel paid no attention, but continued to talk a little nervously on very insipid subjects.  Her eyes had the pathetic look often seen in stupid people’s eyes, the “Don’t-listen-to-me” look, “I am not saying what I should like to say.  The real Me is better than this.”

Finally Richard indulged in a trick that was evidently a stock joke among magic people, for the witch laughed directly it began.  Just as the hostess, with poised fork and spoon, was about to distribute the whitebait, the round table began to spin, and the whitebait were whisked away from her.  The table continued to spin for a moment, with a deep thrilling organ sound, and when it stopped, the whitebait were found to have assembled opposite to Richard’s place.  He distributed them gravely.  Lady Arabel turned scarlet, and murmured to Sarah Brown:  “So dretfully ingenious, and so merry.”

Sarah Brown took pity on her, and began talking at random.  The orchestra was busy again, and to the tune of a loud elusive rag-time, she shouted:  “Do you know, I gave my job the sack this morning.  I shall be on the brink of starvation in three and a half days’ time.  That’s counting a box of Oxo Cubes I have by me.  You don’t happen to know of a suitable job.  I can’t cook, and if I sew a button on it comes off quicker than if I hadn’t.  But I once learnt to play the big drum.”

“My dear,” said Lady Arabel, instantly motherly.  “How too dretful.  I wish I knew of something suitable.  But—­war-time you know,—­I’m afraid I shan’t be justified in keeping on the orchestra, certainly not in adding to it.  Besides, of course, although women are simply too splendid nowadays, don’t you think the big drum—­just a wee bit unwomanly, my dear.  However——­”

“Are you clever?” asked Richard.

“Yes, she is,” said the witch proudly.  “She writes Minor Poetry.  I saw a bit by her in a magazine that had no pictures,—­the bit of poetry was between an article on Tariff Reform and a statement of the Coal Situation, and it began ‘Oh my beloved....’  I thought it was a very beautiful bit of Minor Poetry, but somehow I couldn’t make it fit in with the two articles.  That worried me a little.”

“If you’d try your best not to be clever I’d give you a job,” said Richard, who with a rather tiresome persistence was now levitating the chicken, so that, invisibly suspended at a height of eighteen inches above the middle of the table, it dripped gravy into a bowl of daffodils.  “In fact I will give you a job.  I have a farm called Higgins Farm, just about half-way between sea-level and sky-level.  You can be a Hand, if you like, at sixpence an hour.  You can get there from Mitten Island every day quite easily, and I’ll tell you how.  It’s just the other side of the Parish of Faery, on your right as you reach the mainland from Mitten Island.  You follow the Green Ride through the Enchanted Forest, until you come to the Castle where the Youngest Prince—­who rescued one of the Fetherstonhaugh girls from a giant and married her—­used to live.  The Castle’s to let now; she is an ambulance driver in Salonika, and he a gunner—­just got his battery, I believe.  Below the outer wall of the Castle you will see the Daisified Path, and that leads you straight to the gate of Higgins Farm, under a clipped box archway.”