The grass, dead though it was, had its beauties, for it was ethereally pale and shone silvery in the wisp-light. The fruit was a mouthful of apple, desiccated but edible. ‘Treasures,’ she said, somewhat enlightened, and wrapped them carefully back up in the cotton. This bundle, too, went into her bodice.
In answer to Phineas’s questioning look, she said only, ‘We will shortly discover their use. It is more pressing to come up with an answer to those three questions.’
‘I can answer them,’ said Phineas.
‘Can you indeed?’
‘Most certainly.’ He spoke stoutly, but his abundant confidence could not quite instil Ilsevel with very much to match it.
But her own mind being perfectly blank of possible answers, she was obliged to trust him. And it was not so very difficult to do so, after all, for
