Betrayal Would Be A Different Sort Of

The Magic In That Country Was So Thick And Tenacious That It Settled Over The Land Like Chalk-dust And Over Floors And Shelves Like Slightly Sticky Plaster-dust. (housecleaners In That Country Earned Unusually Good Wages.) If You Lived In That Country, You Had To De-scale Your Kettle Of Its Encrustation Of Magic At Least Once A Week, Because If You Didn't, You Might Find Yourself Pouring Hissing Snakes Or Pond Slime Into Your Teapot Instead Of Water.

...and Again She Wished For Sherwood, And The Dappled Roof Of Leaves That Never Weighed Upon Her. She Pulled Her Scarf Closer Around Her And Thought, I Would Rather Live In A Hut In The Woods; A Hut Like The One Of My First Memories, With A Clean-swept Dirt Floor, And A Brown-eyed Boy Watching Me From Behind His Mother's Skirts As I Watched Him From Behind Mine.

He Grunted; She Recognized It As Relief That She Wasn't Going To Nag Him Further About Tor The Just, Who Probably Wasn't That Boring If He Could Hold Off The Notherners For Nine Days And Melt A Hole In The Hills.

I Like To Assume That Since I Drive A Car And Maintain A Respectable Credit Rating And Rarely Murder Anyone And Bury Them In The Back Garden Unless They Really Deserve It, That The Fact That I Hear Voices Wont Unduly Disturb Anyone.

It Doesn't Matter If I'm Only To Be Gone Four Days, As In This Case; I Take Six Months' Supply Of Reading Material Everywhere. Anyone Who Needs Further Explication Of This Eccentricity Can Find It Usefully Set Out In The First Pages Of W. Somerset Maugham's Story "the Book-bag.