“I’m afraid I haven’t got the gift of discipline,” sighed the dragon.  “And fairies are of course abnormally undisciplined creatures.  Still, we simply can’t get any one else, and Higgins will not apply for a few German prisoners.  Get on with your work, you people, do.  There, you see, they defy me to an extent.  Ever since the cowmen dipped me in the horse-pond my authority’s gone—­gone where the good niggers go.”

I find that there are quite a lot of people who cannot say the word “gone” without adding the clause about the good niggers.  These people have vague minds, sown like an allotment with phrases in grooves.  Directly the dragon said “to an extent” without qualifying the extent, one saw why it had no gift of discipline.

“I wouldn’t attempt this job,” it continued, winding breathlessly along the rutty road, “only I am under a great obligation to Richard Higgins.  I am a protidgy of his, you know, he rescued me from a lot of mischievous knights who were persecuting me.  One of them had tied his tin hat to my tail, I remember, and the rest were trying to stick their nasty spears between my scales.  Really, you know, it was quite dangerous.  I have known a fellow’s eye put out that way.  I am not very good at fighting, though I might have tackled one at a time.  Richard Higgins rode right into the midst of them, knocking them right and left.  Gosh, he gave them a talking to, and they slank away.  He took my case up after that, made enquiries, and gave me this job.  We scrape along somehow, but I’m afraid I’m not really suited for it.”

They reached a part of a field in which broad beans were enjoying an innocent childhood among white butterflies.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” said the dragon shyly, “I should like you to hoe between the rows of these beans.  You will find a hoe against the big stack.  This is your row, I reserved it for you.”

All the other rows were occupied by fairy women with their skirts tucked up—­for only your amateur land-woman wears breeches.  They all had hoes, but were not using them much.  They were singing curious old round songs like summer dreams; you could hear strange fragments of phrases passing from voice to voice.  They took no notice of Sarah Brown, and she began to work.

“Oh, my One,” she said to David.  “How happy this is.  No wonder they sing.  Any one must sing working like this in great fields.  Why, I even remember that the Shropshire Lad whistled once by mistake, while ploughing, on his own admission, until a fatalistic blackbird recalled him to his usual tragic mind.”

David sat uncomfortably on a broad bean, protesting against this new mania.  For a moment he had thought that she was seeking for a mouse with some patent mouse-finding implement.  He had even tried to help her, and turned over a clod with a critical paw, but one sniff had showed him the empty futility of the thing.