And with an angry snort Mumchance realized, not for the first time in his life, that it was a waste of time trying to get any sense out of Mother Tibbs.
So he started again to search the house, this time for fairy fruit.
However, not a pip, not a scrap of peel could he find that looked suspicious. But, finally, in the loft he discovered empty sacks with great stains of juice on them, and it could have been no ordinary juice, for some of the stains were colours he had never seen before.
The terrible news of the Crabapple Blossoms’ disappearance spread like wildfire through Lud-in-the-Mist. Business was at a standstill. Half the Senators, and some of the richer tradesmen, had daughters in the Academy, and poor Mumchance was besieged by frantic parents who seemed to think that he was keeping their daughters concealed somewhere on his person. They were all, too, calling down vengeance on the head of Miss Primrose Crabapple, and demanding that she should be found and handed over to justice.
It was Endymion Leer who got the credit for finding her. He brought her, sobbing and screaming, to the guardroom of the Yeomanry. He said he had discovered her wandering about, half frantic, on the wharf, evidently hoping to take refuge in some outward bound vessel.
She denied all knowledge of what had happened to her pupils, and said she had woken up that morning to find the birds flown.
She also denied, with passionate protestations, having given them fairy fruit. In this, Endymion Leer supported her. The smugglers, he said, were men of infinite resource and cunning, and what more likely than that they should have inserted the stuff into a consignment of innocent figs and grapes?
“And school girls being one quarter boy and three quarters bird,” he added with his dry chuckle, “they cannot help being orchard thieves … and if there isn’t an orchard to rob, why, they’ll rob the loft where the apples are kept. And if the apples turn out not to be apples—why, then, no one is to blame!” Nevertheless, Miss Primrose was locked up in the room in the Guildhall reserved for prisoners of the better class, pending her trial on a charge of receiving contraband goods in the form of woven silk—the only charge, owing to the willful blindness of the law, on which she could be tried.
In the meantime a couple of the Yeomen, who had been scouring the country for Moonlove Honeysuckle, returned with the news that they had chased her as far as the Debatable Hills, and had last seen her scrambling like a goat up their sides. And no Dorimarite could be expected to follow her further.
A couple of days later the Yeomen sent to search for the other Crabapple Blossoms returned with similar news. All along the West Road they had heard rumours of a band of melancholy maidens flitting past to the sound of sad wild ditties. And, finally, they had come upon a goatherd who had seen them disappearing, like Moonlove, among the folds of the terrible hills.
So there was nothing further to be done. The Crabapple Blossoms had by now surely perished in the Elfin Marches, or else vanished forever into Fairyland.
These were sad days in Lud-in-the-Mist—all the big houses with their shutters down, the dancing halls and other places of amusement closed, sad, frightened faces in the streets—and, as if in sympathy with human things, the days shortening, the trees yellowing, and beginning to shed their leaves.
Endymion Leer was much in request—especially in the houses that had hitherto been closed to him. Now, he was in and out of them all day long, exhorting, comforting, advising. And wherever he went he managed to leave the impression that somehow or other Master Nathaniel Chanticleer was to blame for the whole business.
There was no doubt about it, Master Nathaniel, these days, was the most unpopular man in Lud-in-the-Mist.
In the Senate he got nothing but sour looks from his colleagues; threats and insults were muttered behind him as he walked down the High Street; and one day, pausing at a street corner where a puppet-show was being exhibited, he found that he himself was the villain of the piece. For when the time-honoured climax was reached and the hero was belabouring the villain’s wooden head with his cudgel, the falsetto voice of the concealed showman punctuated the blows with such comments as: “There, Nat Cock o’ the Roost, is a black eye to you for small loaves … and there’s another for sour wine … and there’s a bloody nose to you for being too fond of papples and ares.”
Here the showman changed his voice and said, “Please, sir, what are papples and ares?” “Ask Nat Cock o’ the Roost,” came the falsetto, “and he’ll tell you they’re apples and pears that come from across the hills!”
Most significant of all, for the first time since Master Nathaniel had been head of the family, Ebeneezor Prim did not come himself to wind the clocks. Ebeneezor was a paragon of dignity and respectability, and it was a joke in Lud society that you could not really be sure of your social status till he came to wind your clocks himself, instead of sending one of his apprentices.
However, the apprentice he sent to Master Nathaniel was almost as respectable looking as he was himself. He wore a neat black wig, and his expression was sanctimonious in the extreme, with the corners of his mouth turned down, like one of his master’s clocks that had stopped at 7:25.
Certainly a very respectable young man, and one who was evidently fully aware of the unsavoury rumours that were circulating concerning the house of Chanticleer; for he looked with such horror at the silly moon-face with its absurd revolving moustachios of Master Nathaniel’s grandfather clock, and opened its mahogany body so gingerly, and, when he had adjusted its pendulum, wiped his fingers
