"How do you get about so fast?" asked Leo. Paz took from his pocket a tiny pipe, curiously carved from a nut; then he opened a small ivory box, showing Leo a wad of something which looked like raw cotton sprinkled with black seeds.
"One whiff of this, as it burns in my pipe, and I can wish myself where I please."
"Let me have a try," said Leo, taking up the pipe.
Paz smiled. "It would have no more effect upon you than so much tobacco—not as much, probably, for tobacco makes you deathly sick, does it not?"
"Yes," said Leo, listlessly, disappointed that he could not go to the ends of the earth by magic.
Paz noticed the disappointment, and said, by way of diversion, "Where do you like best to be?"
"At home I like the kitchen," said Leo, with a little shrug.
"Good! Come, then, to one of ours: we can be back by the time Master Knops returns." So saying, he started off, and Leo followed.
Paz trotted down a winding staircase that
made Leo feel as if he were a corkscrew, and in a little while ushered him into a place where jets of gas gave a garden-like effect, sprouting as they did from solid rock in the form of tulips and tiger-lilies, but over each was a wire netting, and from the netting were suspended shining little copper kettles and pans of all sorts and shapes.