ion, until a fatalistic blackbird recalled
him to his usual tragic mind."

David sat uncomfortably on a broad bean, protesting against this new
mania. For a moment he had thought that she was seeking for a mouse with
some patent mouse-finding implement. He had even tried to help her, and
turned over a clod with a critical paw, but one sniff had showed him the
empty futility of the thing.

Sarah Brown hoed rather happily for a couple of hours, and then she
began to count the beans still waiting trustfully in the queue, waiting
to be attended to and freed from their embarrassments. There were
ninety-six, she decided, standing up ostensibly to greet an aeroplane.
She became very glad of the occasional aeroplanes that crossed above her
field, and gave her an excuse for standing with a straight back to watch
them. Aeroplanes, crossing singly or in wild-bird formations, are so
common in the sky of Faery that every one in those parts, while turning
his own eyes inevitably upwards, secretly thinks his neighbour
lamentably rustic and unsophisticated for looking at them.

Every aeroplane that crosses Faery feels, I suppose, the reflected magic
from the land below, for there is never one with the barest minute to
spare that does not pause and try to be clever over Higgins Farm. You
may see one industriously climbing the clouds over the Enchanted Forest,
evidently trying hard to be intent on its destination. You may see it
falter, struggling with its sense of duty, and then break weakly into a
mild figure eight. The ragged rooks of Faery at once hurry into the air
to show their laborious imitator how this should be done. The spirit of
frivolous competition enters into the aeroplane, its duty is flung to
the winds. It flaunts itself up and down once or twice, as if to say:
"Now look, everybody, I'm going to be clever." Then it goes mad. It
leaps upon imaginary Boches, it stands upon its head and falls downward
until the very butterflies begin to take cover, it stands upon its tail
and falls upward, it writes messages in a flowing hand across the sky
and returns to cross the t's. It circles impertinently round your head,
fixing its bold tricolour eye upon you until you begin to think there
must be something wrong with your appearance. It bounds upon a field of
onions and rebounds in the same breath from the topmost cloud of heaven.
The rooks return disconsolately to their nests.

Then you may see the erring machine suddenly rememb