‘But you have done fine work,’ said he soothingly. ‘I admired it when I came down. How alive everything looks!’
‘It is not that I mind, exactly,’ Rozebaiel said — perhaps less than truthfully, considering the extent of her indignation before. ‘It is wearying for them to keep up the proper raiment, when there is hardly a scrap of magic to be had anywhere. And they are not so very dull in that whitish garb, are they? There is even something likeable about it, and perhaps I shall keep a few, when I go home. But so weak and watery! And this wine, the same! Intolerable.’
Mistral dipped the tip of one long, thin finger into the neck of the nearest bottle. A soft wind blew up, making a flurry of Rozebaiel’s fallen rose-petals underfoot. When he withdrew his hand, the wine in the bottle had take
