half-a-dozen halfpenny buns for tea, if you will be so kind as to lend
me threepence. We don't bake ourselves."

"I have had tea, thank you," said Miss Ford. "I have just come from a
little gathering of friends on the other side of the river, and I
thought I would call here on my way home. I had noted your address----"

She started as she came in and saw Sarah Brown, and added in her
committee voice: "I had noted your address, because I never mind how
much trouble I take in following up a promising case."

Sarah Brown, on first hearing that trenchant voice, had lost her head
and begun to hide under the counter. But the biscuit-tins refused to
make room, so she drew herself up and smiled politely.

"How good of you to go to a little gathering of friends," said the
witch, obviously trying to behave like a real human person. "I never do,
except now and then by mistake. And even then I only stay when there are
grassy sandwiches to eat. Once there were grassy sandwiches mixed with
bits of hard-boiled egg, and then I stayed to supper. You didn't have
such luck, I see, or you would look happier."

"I don't go to my friends for their food, but for their ideas," said
Miss Ford.

Sarah Brown was gliding towards the door.

"Oh, don't go," said the witch, who did not recognise tact when she met
it. "I have sent Harold the Broomstick for your Dog David and your
Suit-case Humphrey. He is an excellent packer and very clean in his