desire to sleep with her face among the daffodils. She was the most
beautifully alone person in the world that morning; nobody could have
found her. A thin string of very blue smoke went up from her faint fire
and was tangled among the boughs of a flowering tree, but the coarse eye
of a park-keeper could never have seen it. She had escaped from the net
of the cruel hours; for her the stained world was washed clean; for her
all horror held its breath; for her there was absolute spring, and an
innocent sun, and the shadows of daffodils upon closed eyes....




CHAPTER VII

THE FAERY FARM


Sarah Brown, finding herself unfetched by the witch, went home alone
as soon as the 'buses began putting out to sea after the storm. She
expected to find the witch at home, but only the Dog David and Peony
were in the House of Living Alone. David lay on Peony's bed, and Peony
under it. Sarah Brown saw them as she passed their open door.

"Ow Marmaduke!" said Peony, "is it all over? Are you sure? Them 'uns is
so bloody deceitful you never know but what they might go an' blow a
bugle or two to mike believe they'd done, an' then drops bombs on us
just as we was comin' 'appily out from under our beds."

Peony, with a touching faith in the combined protective powers of twelve
inches of mattress and nine inches of dog, had been reading a little