'Do you really think so?' said Jane briskly. 'If you've got wings
you're a bird, and no one minds birds breaking the commandments.
At least, they MAY mind, but the birds always do it, and no one
scolds them or sends them to prison.'

It was not so easy to perch on a plum-tree as you might think,
because the rainbow wings were so very large; but somehow they all
managed to do it, and the plums were certainly very sweet and
juicy.

Fortunately, it was not till they had all had quite as many plums
as were good for them that they saw a stout man, who looked exactly
as though he owned the plum-trees, come hurrying through the
orchard gate with a thick stick, and with one accord they
disentangled their wings from the plum-laden branches and began to
fly.

The man stopped short, with his mouth open. For he had seen the
boughs of his trees moving and twitching, and he had said to
himself, 'The young varmints - at it again!' And he had come out
at once, for the lads of the village had taught him in past seasons
that plums want looking after. But when he saw the rainbow wings
flutter up out of the plum-tree he felt that he must have gone
quite mad, and he did not like the feeling at all. And when Anthea
looked down and saw his mouth go slowly open, and stay so, and his
face become green and mauve in patches, she called out:

'Don't be frightened,' and felt hastily in her pocket for a
threepenny-bit with a hole in it, which she had meant to hang on a
ribbon round her neck, for luck. She hovered round the unfortunate