"'The K-King?'" stammered the grocer.
"'Oh, cut it out,' said the witch, to whom an invisible cloak meant nothing. 'No doubt you've been told to keep quiet, but I don't count. And I'll bet you did the old fool over his maize.'
"The grocer's brain worked very rapidly. The memory of a tin of mixed biscuits and half a Dutch cheese, which had floated out of his shop only the day before, and numerous other recollections of mysteriously animated provisions came swarming into his mind. At length—
"'We never charge Royalty,' he said loftily.
"'Oh, don't you?' snapped the witch. 'Well, supposing you change this broomstick. You swore blue it was cut on a rainless Tuesday from an ash that had supported a murderer with a false nose. The very first time I used it, it broke at six thousand feet. I was over the sea at the time, and had to glide nearly four miles to make a landing. Can you b-beat it?'
"When the grocer put up his shutters two hectic hours later, he was a weary man. In the interval he had been respectively a toad, a picture post-card, and a tin of baked beans. And somebody had knocked him off the counter during his third metamorphosis, so he felt like death. All the same, before going to bed, he sat down and wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, asking for permission to display the Royal Arms. Just to make it quite clear that he wasn't relying on hoof-oil, he added that he was shortly expecting a fine consignment of maize and other commodities.
"The postscript settled it.
"The permission was granted, the king 'dealt' elsewhere in future, and the witch was given three hours to leave the kingdom. So the grocer lost his two worst customers and got the advertisement of his life. Which goes to show, my children, that if only—— Hullo! Here's a new shift."
It was true.
The eight croupiers were going off duty. As they vacated their seats, eight other gentlemen in black immediately replaced them.