“Do you like peaches?” asked the old gentleman.
“Very much indeed,” answered the Wart, and his mouth began to water so that it was full of sweet, soft liquid.
“It is only July, you know,” said the old man reprovingly, and walked off in the direction of the cottage without looking round.
The Wart followed after him, since this was the simplest thing to do, and offered to carry the bucket (which seemed to please the old gentleman, who gave it to him) and waited while he counted his keys, and muttered and mislaid them and dropped them in the grass. Finally, when they had got their way into the black and white cottage with as much trouble as if they were burglaring it, he climbed up the ladder after his host and found himself in the upstairs room.
It was the most marvellous room that the Wart had ever been in.
There was a real corkindrill hanging from the rafters, very lifelike and horrible with glass eyes and scaly tail stretched out behind it. When its master came into the room it winked one eye in salutation, although it was stuffed. There were hundreds of thousands of brown books in leather bindings, some chained to the bookshelves and others propped up against each other as if they had had too much spirits to drink and did not really trust themselves. These gave out a smell of must and solid brownness which was most secure. Then there were stuffed birds, popinjays, and maggot-pies, and kingfishers, and peacocks with all their feathers but two, and tiny birds like beetles, and a reputed phoenix which smelt of incense and cinnamon. It could not have been a real phoenix, because there is only one of these at a time. Over the mantelpiece there was a fox’s mask, with GRAFTON. BUCKINGHAM TO DAVENTRY, 2 HRS 20 MINS written under it, and also a forty-pound salmon with AWE, 43 MIN., BULLDOG written under it, and a very life-like basilisk with CROWHURST OTTER HOUNDS in Roman print. There were several boars’ tusks and the claws of tigers and libbards mounted in symmetrical patterns, and a big head of Ovis Poli, six live grass snakes in a kind of aquarium, some nests of the solitary wasp nicely set up in a glass cylinder, an ordinary beehive whose inhabitants went in and out of the window unmolested, two young hedgehogs in cotton wool, a pair of badgers which immediately began to cry Yik-Yik-Yik-Yik in loud voices as soon as the magician appeared, twenty boxes which contained stick caterpillars and sixths of the puss-moth, and even an oleander that was worth two and six, all feeding on the appropriate leaves, a guncase with all sorts of weapons which would not be invented for half a thousand years, a rod-box ditto, a lovely chest of drawers full of salmon flies which had been tied by Merlyn himself, another chest whose drawers were labelled Mandragora, Mandrake, Old Man’s Beard, etc., a bunch of turkey feathers and goose-quills for making pens, an astrolabe, twelve pairs of boots, a dozen purse-nets, three dozen rabbit wires, twelve corkscrews, an ant’s nest between two glass plates, ink-bottles of every possible colour from red to violet, darning-needles, a gold medal for being the best scholar at Eton, four or five recorders, a nest of field mice all alive-o, two skulls, plenty of cut glass, Venetian glass, Bristol glass and a bottle of Mastic varnish, some satsuma china and some cloisonné, the fourteenth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (marred as it was by the sensationalism of the popular plates), two paint-boxes (one oil, one water-colour), three globes of the known geographical world, a few fossils, the stuffed head of a camel-leopard, six pismires, some glass retorts with cauldrons, bunsen burners, etc., and the complete set of cigarette cards depicting wildfowl by Peter Scott.
Merlyn took off his pointed hat when he came into this extraordinary chamber, because it was too high for the roof, and immediately there was a little scamper in one of the dark corners and a flap of soft wings, and a young tawny owl was sitting on the black skull-cap which protected the top of his head.
“Oh, what a lovely owl!” cried the Wart.
But when he went up to it and held out his hand, the owl grew half as tall again, stood up as stiff as a poker, closed its eyes so that there was only the smallest slit to peep through, as one is in the habit of doing when told to shut one’s eyes at hide-and-seek, and said in a doubtful voice:
“There is no owl.”
Then it shut its eyes entirely and looked the other way.
“It’s only a boy,” said Merlyn.
“There is no boy,” said the owl hopefully, without turning round.
The Wart was so startled by finding that the owl could talk that he forgot his manners and came closer still. At this the owl became so nervous that it made a mess on Merlyn’s head – the whole room was quite white with droppings – and flew off to perch on the farthest tip of the corkindrill’s tail, out of reach.
“We see so little company,” explained Merlyn, wiping his head with half a worn-out pair of pyjama tops which he kept for that purpose, “that Archimedes is a little shy of strangers. Come, Archimedes, I want you to meet a friend of mine called Wart.”
Here he held out his hand to the owl, who came waddling like a goose along the corkindrill’s back – he waddled with this rolling gait so as to keep his tail from being damaged – and hopped down on to Merlyn’s finger with every sign of reluctance.
“Hold out your finger,” said Merlyn, “and put it behind his legs. No, lift it up under his train.”
When the Wart had done this Merlyn moved the owl gently backwards, so that the Wart’s finger pressed against its legs from behind, and it either had to step back on the finger or get pushed off its balance altogether. It stepped back. The Wart stood there delighted, while the furry little feet held tight on to his finger and the sharp claws prickled his skin.
“Say how d’you do properly,” said Merlyn.
“I won’t,” said Archimedes, looking the other way and holding very tight.
“Oh, he is lovely,” said the Wart again. “Have you had him very long?”
“Archimedes has stayed with me since he was quite small, indeed since he had a tiny head like a chicken’s.”
“I wish he would talk to me,” said the Wart.
“Perhaps if you were to give him this mouse here, politely, he might learn to know you better.”
Merlyn took the dead mouse out of his skull-cap – “I always keep them there,” he explained, “and worms too, for fishing. I find it most convenient” – and handed it to the Wart, who held it out rather gingerly towards Archimedes. The nutty little curved beak looked as if it were capable of doing damage, but Archimedes looked closely at the mouse, blinked at the Wart, moved nearer on the finger, closed his eyes and leant forward. He stood there with closed eyes and an expression of rapture on his face, as if he were saying grace, and then, with the absurdest little sideways nibble, took the morsel so gently that he would not have broken a soap bubble. He remained leaning forward with closed eyes, with the mouse suspended from his beak, as if he were not sure what to do with it. Then he lifted his right foot – he was right-handed – and took hold of the mouse. He held it up like a boy holding a stick of rock or a constable with his truncheon, looked at it, nibbled its tail. He turned it round so that it was head first, for the Wart had offered it the wrong way round, and gave one gulp. He looked round at the company with the tail hanging out of the corner of his mouth – as much as to say, “I wish you would not all