“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 passed 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 grassy 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.