"Yes, Miss Primrose Crabapple!" boomed Master Ambrose, "nonsensical, foul-minded, obscene old...." "Yes, yes," interrupted Endymion Leer with good-humoured impatience, "I daresay she's all of that and a great deal more, but, all the same, I don't believe her capable of having given your daughter what you think she has. I admit, when you first showed me that slipper I was frightened. Unlike you, I am a bit of a botanist, and I certainly have never seen a berry like that in Dorimare. But after all that does not prove that it grows ... across the hills. There's many a curious fruit to be found in the Cinnamon Isles, or in the oases of the Amber Desert ... why, your own ships, Master Ambrose, sometimes bring such fruit. The ladies of Lud have no lack of exotic fruit and flowers to copy in their embroidery. No, no, you're a bit unhinged this evening, Master Ambrose, else you would not allow so much as the shadow of foul suspicions like these to cross your mind." Master Ambrose groaned. And then he said a little stiffly, "I am not given, Dr. Leer, to harbouring foul suspicions without cause. But a great deal of mischief is sometimes done by not facing facts. How is one to explain my daughter's running away, due west, like one possessed? Besides, Prunella Chanticleer as much as told me she had ... eaten a certain thing ... and ... and ... I'm old enough to remember the great drought, so I know the smell, so to speak, of evil, and there is something very strange going on in that Academy." "Prunella Chanticleer, did you say?" queried Endymion Leer with an emphasis on the last word, and with a rather odd expression in his eyes. Master Ambrose looked surprised. "Yes," he said. "Prunella Chanticleer, her school fellow and intimate friend." Endymion Leer gave a short laugh. "The Chanticleers are ... rather curious people," he said drily, "Are you aware that Ranulph Chanticleer has done the very thing you suspect your daughter of having done?" Master Ambrose gaped at him. Ranulph had certainly always been an odd and rather disagreeable boy, and there had been that horrid little incident at the Moongrass cheese supper-party ... but that he actually should have eaten fairy fruit! "Do you mean? Do you mean...?" he gasped. Endymion Leer nodded his head significantly: "One of the worst cases I have ever known." "And Nathaniel knows?" Again Endymion Leer nodded. A wave of righteous indignation swept over Master Ambrose. The Honeysuckles were every bit as ancient and honourable a family as the Chanticleers, and yet here was he, ready to tarnish his escutcheon for ever, ready if need be to make the town crier trumpet his disgrace from the market-place, to sacrifice money, position, family pride, everything, for the good of the community. While the only thought of Nathaniel, and he the Mayor, was to keep his skeleton safely hidden in the cupboard.