dreamed about flying, and is seems so beautifully easy—only, you can never remember how you did it; and as a rule you have to do it without wings, in your dreams, which is more clever and uncommon, but not so easy to remember the rule for. Now the four children rose flapping from the ground, and you can't think how good the air felt as it ran against their faces. Their wings were tremendously wide when they were spread out, and they had to fly quite a long way apart so as not to get in each other's way. But little things like this are easily learned.
All the words in the English Dictionary, and in the Greek Lexicon as well, are, I find, of no use at all to tell you exactly what it feels like to be flying, so I will not try. But I will say that to look down on the fields and woods instead of along at them, is something like looking at a beautiful live map, where, instead of silly colors on paper, you have real moving sunny woods and green fields laid out one after the other. As Cyril said, and I can't think where he got hold of such a strange expression, "It does you a fair treat!" It was most wonderful and more like real magic than any wish the children had had yet. They flapped and flew and sailed on their great rainbow wings, between green earth and blue sky; and they flew over Rochester and then swerved round towards Maidstone, and presently they all began to feel extremely hungry. Curiously enough, this happened when they were flying rather low, and just as they were crossing an orchard where some early plums shone red and ripe.
They paused on their wings. I cannot explain to you how this is done, but it is something like treading water when you are swimming, and hawks do it extremely well.
"Yes, I daresay," said Cyril, though no one had spoken. "But stealing is stealing even if you've got wings."
"Do you really think so?" said Jane briskly. "If you've got wings you're a bird, and no one minds birds breaking the commandments. At least, they may mind, but the birds always do it, and no one scolds them or sends them to prison."
It was not so easy to perch on a plum-tree as you might think, because the rainbow wings were so very large; but somehow they all managed to do it, and the plums were certainly very sweet and juicy.
Fortunately, it was not till they had all had quite as many plums as were good for them that they saw a stout man, who looked exactly as though he owned the plum-trees, come hurrying through the orchard gate with a thick stick, and with one accord they disentangled their wings from the plum-laden branches and began to fly.
The man stopped short, with his mouth open. For he had seen the boughs of his trees moving and twitching, and he had said to himself, "Them young varmint—at it again!" And he had come out at once, for the lads of the village had taught him in past seasons that plums want looking after. But when he saw the rainbow wings flutter up out of the plum-tree he felt that he must have gone quite mad, and he did not like the feeling at all. And when Anthea looked down and saw his mouth go slowly open, and stay so, and his face become green and mauve in patches, she called out—
They flew over Rochester
"Don't be frightened," and felt hastily in her pocket for a threepenny-bit with a hole in it, which she had meant to hang on a ribbon round her neck, for luck. She hovered round the unfortunate plum-owner, and said, "We have had some of your plums; we thought it wasn't stealing, but now I am not so sure. So here's some money to pay for them."
She swooped down toward the terror-stricken grower of plums, and slipped the coin into the pocket of his jacket, and in a few flaps she had rejoined the others.
The farmer sat down on the grass, suddenly and heavily.
"Well—I'm blessed!" he said. "This here is what they call delusions, I suppose. But this here threepenny"—he had pulled it out and bitten it,—"that's real enough. Well, from this day forth I'll be a better man. It's the kind of thing to sober a chap for life, this is. I'm glad it was only wings, though. I'd rather see the birds as aren't there, and couldn't be, even if they pretend to talk, than some things as I could name."
He got up slowly and heavily, and went indoors, and he was so nice to his wife that day that she felt quite happy, and said to herself, "Law, whatever have a-come to the man!" and smartened herself up and put a blue ribbon bow at the place where her collar fastened on, and looked so pretty that he was kinder than ever. So perhaps the winged children really did do one good thing that day. If so, it was the only one; for really there is nothing like wings for getting you into trouble. But, on the other hand, if you are in trouble, there is nothing like wings for getting you out of it.
This was the case in the matter of the fierce dog who sprang out at them when they had folded up their wings as small as possible and were going up to a farm door to ask for a crust of bread and cheese, for in spite of the plums they were soon just as hungry as ever again.
Now there is no doubt whatever that, if the four had been ordinary wingless children, that black and fierce dog would have had a good bite out of the brown-stockinged leg of Robert, who was the nearest. But at its first growl there was a flutter of wings, and the dog was left to strain at his chain and stand on his hind-legs as if he were trying to fly too.
They tried several other farms, but at those where there were no dogs the people were far too frightened to do anything but scream; and at last, when it was nearly four o'clock, and their wings were getting miserably stiff and tired, they alighted on a church-tower and held a council of war.
"We can't possibly fly all the way home without dinner or tea," said Robert with desperate decision.
"And nobody will give us any dinner, or even lunch, let alone tea," said Cyril.
"Perhaps the clergyman here might," suggested Anthea. "He must know all about angels"—
"Anybody could see we're not that," said Jane. "Look at Robert's boots and Squirrel's plaid necktie."
"Well," said Cyril firmly, "if the country you're in won't sell provisions, you take them. In wars I mean. I'm quite certain you do. And even in other stories no good brother would allow his little sisters to starve in the midst of plenty."
"Plenty?" repeated Robert hungrily; and the others looked vaguely round the bare leads of the church-tower, and murmured, "In the midst of?"
"Yes," said Cyril impressively. "There is a larder window at the side of the clergyman's house, and I saw things to eat inside—custard pudding and cold chicken and tongue—and pies—and jam. It's rather a high window—but with wings"—
"How clever of you!" said Jane.
"Not at all," said Cyril modestly; "any born general—Napoleon or the Duke of Marlborough—would have seen it just the same as I did."
"It seems very wrong," said Anthea.
"Nonsense," said Cyril. "What was it Sir Philip Sidney said when the soldier wouldn't give him a drink?—'My necessity is greater than his.'"
"We'll club together our money, though, and leave it to pay for the things, won't we?" Anthea was persuasive, and very nearly in tears, because it is most trying to feel enormously hungry and unspeakably sinful at one and the same time.
"Some of it," was the cautious reply.
Everyone now turned out its pockets on the lead roof of the tower, where visitors for the last hundred and fifty years had cut their own and their sweethearts' initials with penknives in the soft lead. There was five-and-seven-pence halfpenny altogether, and even the upright Anthea admitted that that was too much to pay for four people's dinners. Robert said he thought eighteenpence.
And half-a-crown was finally agreed to be "handsome."
So Anthea wrote on the back of her last term's report, which happened to be in her pocket, and from which she first tore her own name and that of the school, the following letter:—
"Dear Reverend Clergyman,—We are very hungry