When they came to the Tuft of Moss they found Rain's seat close guarded by Julia, the lady Griffin, who lay stretched out to a length of eighteen feet, asleep, with one eye open. At sight of Rain she blinked, and wagged eight feet of fine bronze tail with spikes, and a barbed tip complete.
"How d'ye do?" she minced affectedly. "I hope I see you well, ma'am." Her wicked eye was cocked at Storm, and her jaw slavered.
"If you sniff at him," said Rain, "I'll tell him how old you are."
Being a mature virgin, some fourteen centuries of age, she promised faithfully to be very good. "Especially," she added, if I may be chaperon. I'd love to feel like a real chaperon. I'd be vastly obleeged if I might take you to the Mythological Gardens.
"You know I'm really and truly a Dragon, and it's only to be genteel that I try to behave like a Griffin. But, would you believe it"—with much complaisance Julia surveyed her lion body, alligator tail, and folded bat wings—"that among my relatives at the Mythological Gardens I am considered almost plain, not quite of course, but almost?"
She invited the lovers to take their seats between her folded wings, which they did. They knew it would please poor Julia.
"If it were not unbecoming," she simpered, "to a perfect lady—ahem—I would say 'Hang on with teeth and toenails, or you will alight—ahem—at the wrong gardens.' I will now ask you, Lady and Gentleman, to put twopence in the slot. It's for the Home, you know, for Decayed Griffins. Thank you. I will next proceed—as expected—to breathe out a few small flames."
She did, although the flames were neither few nor small, and with a mighty leap extended her wings, all gloriously iridescent, flapped powerfully and soared into the skies. Then her wings seemed asleep upon the air, with delicate featherings as she steered through space.
As to the landscape down there which floated past at a hundred miles an hour, I might plead scant time to see, but that other fellows who have traveled in aeroplanes would sneer at my false pretenses. Or I might claim that, were the story told, nobody on earth would believe one word of it, and that again would be a mean excuse. It is best to own up at once to a very well-grown, mature, and lively ignorance. And yet, there being many sorts of gems, as diamonds or rubies; so there be divers kinds of ignorance. Nobody would compare my ignorance with that of a truly scientific person, shut up in a little truth-tight compartment, and taking less air and exercise than any convict. My darkness is complete and natural. Concerning the provinces of Dreamland, Fairyland, and Wonderland I have read Alice (a sound authority), the Arabian Nights, which are most explicit, Malory's Morte D'Arthur, Mandeville's Travels, Hans Anderson, the Brothers Grimm, bits of the Odyssey, and in fact all the best authors, who visited lands of glamour in their dreams, and brought us back their happy memories of truly facts. But how did they get back? How tear themselves away? On questions like these the witnesses are dumb, the scientists are stumped, and how on earth should I know! Yet one may console oneself with the comfortable thought that the more ignorant an author is, the longer the words he is obliged to use, and the deeper his obscurity of style. By that measure the ignorance of Darwin about Biology, of Spencer in Philosophy, of Lodge on Ether of Space is something really too awful to think about.
In her way, and as Griffins go, Julia was rather a good sort. She meant well, but when she set up as a guide to places where she had never been before, she became like a professional medium, all whoppers and busters. Her passengers were not at all particular, but when she pointed out Sinbad's palace she said it was Asgaard the gods-home of the Norseman. Then she showed off a Chinese pagoda as the Court of King Arthur of England, so Storm called her a liar. "So far," she said judicially, "as it is quite becoming to a perfect lady—I am. You see, my dears, I know exactly where we are, but the Mythological Gardens have been removed, and I regret to say mislaid in the confusion of removal. House-moving is always a worry, but think of having to move the whole Mythological Gardens! It's perfectly dreadful!"