The shop was divided into three horizontal departments.  Nearest the floor were the foodstuffs; biscuit tins buttressed the counter on every side; regiments of Grape-nuts, officered by an occasional Quaker Oat, stood in review order all round the lower shelves.  On the counter little castles of tinned fruit were built, while bins beneath it held the varied grain, cereal, and magic stock.  About on a level with one’s head the hardware department began:  frying-pans lolled with tin coffee-pots over racks, dust-pans divorced from their brushes were platonically attached to flat-irons or pie-dishes, Stephen’s Inks were allied with penny mugs or tins of boot polish in an invasion of the middle shelves, and a wreath of sponges crowned the champion of a row of kettles in shining armour.  Against the ceiling the drapery section was found.  Overalls, ready-made breeches, babies’ socks, and pink flannelette mysteries hung doubled up as if in pain over strings nailed to the rafters.  From this department Sarah Brown, balanced upon three large biscuit tins placed on the counter, chose her outfit with vanity and care.  The general effect was not good, but she did not know this, for she studied the parts separately in a six-inch mirror.  She was filled with a simple pleasure.  For she was always absurdly moved by little excitements, and by any prospect of a changed to-morrow.  She was not really used to being alive at all, and that is what made her take to magic so kindly.

“In six hours,” she said, “I shall be on my way to something utterly new.”

And in six hours she was on her way, whistling, across the Parish of Faery.  The Dog David ran in front of her among the daisies.  The rabbits can never be caught in this land of happy animals, but they give good sport and always play fair.

David Blessing Brown, a dog of independent yet loving habit, had spent about four-fifths of his life in the Brown family.  He was three years old, and though ineligible for military service, made a point of wearing khaki about his face, and in a symmetrical heart-shaped spot near his tail.  To Sarah Brown he was the Question and the Answer, his presence was a constant playtime for her mind; so well was he loved that he seemed to her to move in a little mist and clamour of love.  With every one else she held but lame intercourse, but her Dog David and she withheld no passing thought from each other.  They could often be heard by unmattering landladies and passers-by exchanging views in the strong Suffolk accent that was a sort of standing joke between them.  I believe that Sarah Brown had loved the Dog David so much that she had given him a soul.  Certainly other dogs did not care for him.  David said that they had found out that his second name was Blessing, and that they laughed at him for it.  His face was seamed with the scars of their laughing.  But I know that the enmity had a more fundamental reason than that.  I know that when men speak with the tongues of angels they are shunned and hated by men, and so I think that when dogs approach humanity too nearly they are banished from the love of their own kind.