"Fifty," corrected Berry. "And now let's change the subject. How d'you pronounce Lwow? Or would you rather tell me a fairy tale?"
I shook my head.
"My power," I said, "of concentration is limited."
"Then I must," said Berry. "It's fatal to brood over your fortune." He sat back in his chair and let the smoke make its own way out of his mouth. "There was once a large king. It wasn't his fault. The girth went with the crown. All the Koppabottemburgs were enormous. Besides, it went very well with his subjects. Looking upon him, they felt they were getting their money's worth. A man of simple tastes, his favourite hobby was fowls.
"One day, just as he'd finished cleaning out the fowl-house, he found that he'd run out of maize. So he slipped on his invisible cloak and ran round to the grocer's. He always wore his invisible cloak when shopping. He found it cheaper.
"Well, the grocer was just recovering from the spectacle of two pounds of the best maize shoving themselves into a brown-paper bag and pushing off down the High Street, when a witch came in. The grocer's heart sank into his boots. He hated witches. If you weren't civil, before you knew where you were, you were a three-legged toad or a dew-pond or something. So you had to be civil. As for their custom—well, it wasn't worth having. They wouldn't look at bacon, unless you'd guarantee that the pig had been killed on a moonless Friday with the wind in the North, and as for pulled figs, if you couldn't swear that the box had been crossed by a one-eyed man whose father had committed arson in a pair of brown boots, you could go and bury them under the lilacs.
"This time, however, the grocer was pleasantly surprised.
"I didn't know," said the witch, "that you were under the patronage of
Royalty."
"Oh, didn't you?" said the grocer. "Why, the Master of the Horse has got his hoof-oil here for nearly two days now."
"Master of the Horse be snookered," said the witch. "I'm talking about the king."