promptly. 'Though all forbid I should recommend any man where it's
a question of horses, no more than I'd take anybody else's
recommending if I was a-buying one. But if your pa's thinking of
a turnout of any sort, there ain't a straighter man in Rochester,
nor a civiller spoken, than Billy, though I says it.'

'Thank you,' said Cyril. 'The Saracen's Head.'

And now the children began to see one of the laws of nature turn
upside down and stand on its head like an acrobat. Any grown-up
persons would tell you that money is hard to get and easy to spend.
But the fairy money had been easy to get, and spending it was not
only hard, it was almost impossible. The tradespeople of Rochester
seemed to shrink, to a trades-person, from the glittering fairy
gold ('furrin money' they called it, for the most part). To begin
with, Anthea, who had had the misfortune to sit on her hat earlier
in the day, wished to buy another. She chose a very beautiful one,
trimmed with pink roses and the blue breasts of peacocks. It was
marked in the window, 'Paris Model, three guineas'.

'I'm glad,' she said, 'because, if it says guineas, it means
guineas, and not sovereigns, which we haven't got.'

But when she took three of the spade guineas in her hand, which was
by this time rather dirty owing to her not having put on gloves
before going to the gravel-pit, the black-silk young lady in the
shop looked very hard at her, and went and whispered something to
an older and uglier lady, also in black silk, and then they gave
her back the money and said it was not current coin.