Here outside the forest there was weather again, and the weather was
more promising than generous. It continued to promise all day without
exactly explaining what its promise was, and without achieving any
special fulfilment. Fine silver lines of sunlight were ruled at a steep
angle across a grey slate view.

At the gate of Higgins Farm, Sarah Brown was a little disconcerted to
find a small dragon. It was coiled round a tree beside the clipped box
archway. It was not a very fine specimen, being of a brownish-green
colour, and having lost the tip of one wing. Its spine was serrated,
especially deeply between its shoulder blades, where it could raise a
sort of crest if angered or excited. But at present it was asleep, its
saturnine and rather wistful face rested upon one scaly paw.

Sarah Brown was uncertain what to do, but the Dog David took the matter
into his own paws by mistake. He had just met one of the castle dogs,
one of those tremulous-tailed creatures who spend themselves in a rather
pathetic effort to sustain an imaginary reputation for humour. David
retorted to this dog's first facetious onslaught with a kindly quip,
they trod on each other once or twice with extravagant gestures, and
then parted hysterically, each supposing himself to be pursued by the
other. It was then that David tripped over the dragon's barbed tail.
David squeaked, and the dragon awoke. It uncoiled itself suddenly like
a broken spring.

"Gosh," it said. "Asleep again! I was waiting for you, and the sun on my
back always makes me sleepy. I am the foreman. Higgins telephoned that
you were coming."