"Do you know anything about a
young woman of the name of Watkins, living at Number 100 Beautiful
Way----"

"No, he doesn't," shouted the witch, opening the shop door. "But do step
in. We met yesterday, you may remember. I'll ask the ferryman to get
half-a-dozen halfpenny buns for tea, if you will be so kind as to lend
me threepence. We don't bake ourselves."

"I have had tea, thank you," said Miss Ford. "I have just come from a
little gathering of friends on the other side of the river, and I
thought I would call here on my way home. I had noted your address----"

She started as she came in and saw Sarah Brown, and added in her
committee voice: "I had noted your address, because I never mind how
much trouble I take in following up a promising case."

Sarah Brown, on first hearing that trenchant voice, had lost her head
and begun to hide under the counter. But the biscuit-tins refused to
make room, so she drew herself up and smiled politely.

"How good of you to go to a little gathering of friends," said the
witch, obviously trying to behave like a real human person. "I never do,
except now and then by mistake. And even then I only stay when there are
grassy sandwiches to eat. Once there were grassy sandwiches mixed with
bits of hard-boiled egg, and then I stayed to supper. You didn't have
such luck, I see, or you would look happier."

"I don't go to my friends for their food, but for their ideas," said
Miss Ford.

Sarah Brown was gliding towards the door.

"Oh, don't go," said the witch, who did not recognise tact when she met
it. "I have sent Harold the Broomstick for your Dog David and your
Suit-case Humphrey. He is an excellent packer and very clean in his
person and work. Please, please, don't go. Do you know, I live in
constant dread of being left alone with a clever person."

"I must apologise for my intrusion, in that case," said Miss Ford, with
dignity. "I repeat, I only came because I saw yours was an exceptional
case."

There was a very long silence in the growing dusk. The moon could
already be seen through the glass door, rising, pushing vigorously aside
the thickets of the crowded sky. A crack across the corner of the glass
was lighted up, and looked like a little sprig of lightning, plucked
from a passing storm and preserved in the glass.

Miss Ford suddenly began to talk in a very quick and confused way. Any
sane hearer would have known that she was talking by mistake, that she
was possesse