Half the servants fell on their knees. The other half flew up into the rafters, where they felt pretty sure their angry Queen would not follow them. Glancing neither upward nor downward, Tiphaine went silently along many passages and up several flights of stairs to her bower41; and Tiffany followed her with his heart in his boots.

‘Shut the door,’ said she. ‘I do not wish anyone to hear you rebuked.’ She looked so beautiful that he trembled. ‘I did not have you fetched to Elfhame,’ said she, ‘to gape after wings and keep company with people who, however useful and necessary they may be, are no better than sparrows. You must put all thought of flying out of your head. If you do not, you will be sent away and never see me again.’

His face, his neck, his hands turned scarlet. His ears stood out like flags in a gale.

‘Promise me, Tiffany.’

He promised with all his heart. She laid her hand on his hot cheek. ‘There’s my good Tiffany! It would have made me sad to send you away. Tomorrow, you shall have your first billiard lesson. And when you put on your next new suit of clothes we will have a banquet.’

It was a splendid banquet. New clothes were issued to all. People in corridors murmured to each other, ‘I shouldn’t be surprised if—’ and, ‘I’ve thought so for a long while.’ All agreed that Tiffany had every qualification for the Green Ribbon—though some of the court ladies did so rather wistfully. For the Green Ribbon tied about a boy’s waist denotes that when he is old enough he will be the Queen’s love and that in the meantime no woman may lay a finger on him.

Duly, at the banquet, the Green Ribbon was tied round Tiffany’s waist by the Lord Chamberlain and the Ambassador from Thule.

After the old Minister died, a new one came. He was called Guthrie. His wife was sickly and hadn’t enough strength in her arms to knead dough, so he bought bread from Tod’s bakery. One day he noticed Adam, who was drawing ‘A’s and ‘B’s on the floor with a wet finger. ‘Your boy’s young to know his alphabet,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t say that he knows his alphabet,’ answered Mr Tod, ‘but he copies the letters off the advertisements. I wish he were as forward in walking. His legs are rickety, that’s the truth of it.’

Adam could not fly. Elfindom is an aristocratic society, and jealous of its privileges. Before an elf-baby is sent into the human world its wings are extirpated and it is dosed with an elixir of mortality, compounded from the tears and excrement of changelings. Neither process is wholly satisfactory. The transfers die, but tardily and with extreme difficulty, and some have been known to hover briefly in the air—a phenomenon called levitation and usually ascribed to saintliness.