from the land below, for there is never one with the barest minute to
spare that does not pause and try to be clever over Higgins Farm. You
may see one industriously climbing the clouds over the Enchanted Forest,
evidently trying hard to be intent on its destination. You may see it
falter, struggling with its sense of duty, and then break weakly into a
mild figure eight. The ragged rooks of Faery at once hurry into the air
to show their laborious imitator how this should be done. The spirit of
frivolous competition enters into the aeroplane, its duty is flung to
the winds. It flaunts itself up and down once or twice, as if to say:
"Now look, everybody, I'm going to be clever." Then it goes mad. It
leaps upon imaginary Boches, it stands upon its head and falls downward
until the very butterflies begin to take cover, it stands upon its tail
and falls upward, it writes messages in a flowing hand across the sky
and returns to cross the t's. It circles impertinently round your head,
fixing its bold tricolour eye upon you until you begin to think there
must be something wrong with your appearance. It bounds upon a field of
onions and rebounds in the same breath from the topmost cloud of heaven.
The rooks return disconsolately to their nests.

Then you may see the erring machine suddenly remember itself, and check
itself in the act of some new paroxysm. It remembers the European War
that gave it birth; it thinks of its mates scanning the sky for its
coming; its frivolity ebbs suddenly. The eastern sky becomes once more
its highway instead of its trapeze. It collects its wits, emits a few
contrite bubbles of smoke, and leaps beyond sight.

Whenever this happened, the female fairies behaved in a very plebeian
and forward manner, waving their hoes at each machine, encouraging it by
brazen gestures to further extravagances, and striving to reach its
hearing with loud shrill cries. There was very little difference