Argosy, September 1955 — page 92: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

| a, Sil ee a5. go JOAN AIKEN Mr. Bond next took an evening walk in the forest. A few days later it was reported that he had set out with a tin of golden syrup and a paintbrush and was busy painting the trunks of the trees. The Countess hastily arrayed herself with all her enchantments and made her way to where he was working. The whole forest hummed with interest and excitement and the leprechauns were jumping up and down in their bushes to such an extent that showers of hawthorn blossom kept falling down. Mr. Bond noticed nothing of all this, but he was just able to discern the Wicked Countess with her streaming hair and her beauty. He thought she must be the District Nurse. “The top of the evening to you,” she greeted him, “ and isn’t it a grand and strange thing you be doing there, anointing the bark of the trees with treacle as if they were horses and they with the knees broken on them? But perhaps ’tis a compliment you do be after paying me, and it meaning to say that the very trees in my forest are so sweet they deserve to be iced like cakes? ”’ ‘“Good evening,” said Mr. Bond with reserve. “I’m out after moths.” ‘And isn’t it a wonderful thing to be pursuing those pitiful brown insects when you could be stepping up to the Castle like a civilized creature and passing a musical evening with me and my maidens, the way our hearts and voices would be singing together like a flock of starlings? ”’ ‘““ Are you the Countess, by any chance? I seem to have heard some vague tales about you, but I never thought that you were areal person. I hope you will forgive me if I have been guilty of any impoliteness.”’ ‘Sure, our hearts are warmer than that in this part of the world, and what’s a trifle of an insult between friends? Do you be after strolling up with me this minute for a drop of something to drink and a few notes of music, for they say music can be a great healer when there’s hurt feelings in the case, and it smooth- ing away the sore hearts and wounded spirits.” Mr. Bond gathered that he had in some way offended this talkative lady, and his mind went back guiltily to the note Norah had given him, which he had sent off to the Royal Society and forgotten to read. He turned and walked with her, and was surprised to notice a grey and vine-wreathed Tower standing in a part of the forest where, he would have been ready to swear, there had been nothing before. “Walk in this way,” said the Countess, holding open a little postern. ‘‘ We won’t stand on ceremony between friends.” They had to climb half a hundred steps of spiral staircase, but comichooks.cohn) ©