"Er--yes," murmured the Curate. He laughed, rather hysterically, and clasped his hands behind his back. "I suppose you do the--er--usual things--gold watches and so forth out of--er--hats. The children have been so looking forward--" He paused and unclasped his hands. The Clockwork man was looking at him very hard, and his eyes were rolling in their sockets in a most bewildering fashion. There was a long pause. "Dear me," the Curate resumed at last, "there must be some mistake. You don't look to me like a conjurer. You see, I wrote to Gamages, and they promised they would send a man. Naturally, I thought when you--" "Gamages," interrupted the Clockwork man, "wait--I seem to understand--it comes back to me--universal providers--cash account--nine and ninepence--nine and ninepence--nine and ninepence--I _beg_ your pardon." "Really!" The Curate's jaw dropped several inches. "I must apologise. You see, I'm really rather flurried. I have the burden of this entertainment upon my shoulders. It was I who arranged the conjuring. I thought it would be so nice for the children." He started rubbing his hands together vigorously, as though to cover up his embarrassment. "Then--then you aren't the man from Gamages?" "No," said the Clockwork man, with a certain amount of dignity, "I am the man from nowhere." The Curate's hands became still. "Oh, dear." He wrestled with the blankness in his mind. "You're certainly--forgive me for saying it--rather an odd person. I'm afraid we've both made a mistake, haven't we?" "Wait," said the Clockwork man, as the Curate walked hesitatingly towards the door, "I begin to grasp things--conjuring--" "But _are_ you the conjurer?" asked the Curate, coming back. "Where I come from," was the astonishing reply, "we are all conjurers. We are always doing conjuring tricks." The Curate's hands were busy again. "I really am quite at a loss," he murmured. "It was a characteristic of the earlier stages of the human race," said the Clockwork man, as though he were addressing a class of students upon some abstruse subject, "that they exercised the arts of legerdemain, magic, illusion and so forth, purely as forms of entertainment in their leisure hours." "Now that sounds interesting," murmured the Curate, as the other paused, although rather for matter than for breath, "it's so _authoritative_--as though it were a quotation from some standard work. All the same, and much as I should like to hear more--" "It is a quotation," explained the Clockwork man solemnly, "from a work I was reading when I--when the thing happened to me. It is published by Gamages, and the price is nine and nine pence--nine and nine pence--Oh, bother--" "I'll make a note of it," said the Curate. "But you must really excuse me now. I have so much to see to. There's the refreshments. The sandwiches are only half cut--"