‘Thank you.’ Giles took it and instantly turned to go.
But after a few steps along the terrace the King’s Finder bethought him he had perhaps been a little ungracious. The Gipsy, with whom he nearly always spent a minute chatting when he met him, might even think himself suspected of keeping something not his own. Giles did not want to talk about the shell to Geoffrey—who of course could not know anything of its strange powers. But he would not have him offended for the world. He turned and came back to the stooping gardener.
‘Do you believe in magic, Geoffrey?’ he asked, plucking a sprig of lavender from a bush that overhung the path.
‘Why—er—yes,’ said the Gipsy, ‘if by that you mean, Sir, anything we can’t understand or explain. But, don’t forget, a whole lot passes for magic with us which is simple enough to birds and beasts. Every day something we thought had the Devil in it is shown to be naught more than our own simple-minded ignorance. “Must be magic,” says Man, as soon as he grows tired of trying to understand a thing. Like children! What’s more magic than the way a flower grows out of a seed, I’d like to know?’
And then to Giles’s great astonishment the gardener looked straight at him and added:
‘Were you thinking of that shell, Sir, by any chance?’
Giles could not yet decide how much the man knew. The jacket had been hanging on a tree six paces away.
‘Er—yes; I was,’ he said at last.
‘Oh, well, I’ve seen lots stranger things than that in foreign lands. Queer deeds—where a man couldn’t believe his own eyes. Yet there they were, happening in front of him.’
The frown deepened on the face of the King’s Finder. Suddenly he stepped forward and lowered his voice.