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down and shut up at once.
    ‘It is not a bad pot,’ he said grudgingly. ‘Only it is inclined to give itself airs.’
    The Wart was so much impressed by the kindness of the old man, and particularly by the lovely things which he possessed, that he hardly liked to ask him personal questions. It seemed politer to sit still and to speak when he was spoken to. But Merlyn did not speak much, and when he did speak it was never in questions, so that the Wart had little opportunity for conversation. At last his curiosity got the better of him, and he asked something which had been puzzling him for some time.
    ‘Would you mind if I ask you a question?’
    ‘It is what I am for.’
    ‘How did you know to set breakfast for two?’
    The old gentleman leaned back in his chair and lighted an enormous meerschaum pipe – Good gracious, he breathes fire, thought the Wart, who had never heard of tobacco – before he was ready to reply. Then he looked puzzled, took off his skull—cap – three mice fell out – and scratched in the middle of his bald head.
    ‘Have you ever tried to draw in a looking—glass?’ he asked.
    ‘I don’t think I have.’
    ‘Looking—glass,’ said Merlyn, holding out his hand. Immediately there was a tiny lady’s vanity—glass in his hand.
    ‘Not that kind, you fool,’ he said angrily. ‘I want one big enough to shave in.’
    The vanity—glass vanished, and in its place there was a shaving mirror about a foot square. He then demanded pencil and paper in quick succession; got an unsharpened pencil and the Morning Post ; sent them back; got a fountain pen with no ink in it and six reams of brown paper suitable for parcels; sent them back; flew into a passion in which he said by—our—lady quite often, and ended up with a carbon pencil and some cigarette papers which he said would have to do.
    He put one of the papers in front of the glass and made five dots.
    ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want you to join those five dots up to make a W, looking only in the glass.’
    The Wart took the pencil and tried to do as he was bid.
    ‘Well, it is not bad,’ said the magician doubtfully, ‘and in a way it does look a bit like an M.’
    Then he fell into a reverie, stroking his beard, breathing fire, and staring at the paper.
    ‘About the breakfast?’
    ‘Ah, yes. How did I know to set breakfast for two? That was why I showed you the looking—glass. Now ordinary people are born forwards in Time, if you understand what I mean, and nearly everything in the world goes forward too. This makes it quite easy for the ordinary people to live, just as it would be easy to join those five dots into a W if you were allowed to look at them forwards, instead of backwards and inside out. But I unfortunately was born at the wrong end of Time, and I have to live backwards from in front, while surrounded by a lot of people living forwards from behind. Some people call it having second sight.’
    He stopped talking and looked at the Wart in an anxious way.
    ‘Have I told you this before?’
    ‘No, we only met about half an hour ago.’
    ‘So little time to pass?’ said Merlyn, and a big tear ran down to the end of his nose. He wiped it off with his pyjamas and added anxiously, ‘Am I going to tell it you again?’
    ‘I do not know,’ said the Wart, ‘unless you have not finished telling me yet.’
    ‘You see, one gets confused with Time, when it is like that. All one’s tenses get muddled, for one thing. If you know what is going to happen to people, and not what has happened to them, it makes it difficult to prevent it happening, if you don’t want it to have happened, if you see what I mean? Like drawing in a mirror.’
    The Wart did not quite see, but was just going to say thathe was sorry for Merlyn if these things made him unhappy, when he felt a curious sensation at his ear. ‘Don’t jump,’ said the old man, just as he was going to do so, and the Wart sat still. Archimedes, who had been standing forgotten