“The nipponanium wasn’t my only secret,” Sam objected. “I had my horoscope in it and my marks ever since I went to school, my book of poems I am writing, and ‘How to catch a fairy’: that’s a spell Fred Arnold gave me for my bag out of a very old notebook a man called Hogan lent him.”
“Does it work?”
“I don’t know. You have to have some Venice glass and the blood of a white hen.”
“That’s against it, son. Well, did you tell anybody else about this bag of secrets?”
“Anybody at all?”
“Anybody?”
“I told Norah Mayo once.”
“Did you? I didn’t know you talked to her much.”
“I don’t. She’s fourteen, although she’s the younger, but there isn’t anybody else to talk to. Oh, I told Mrs. Rogers, the char, but she’s sloped off now.”
“Darling! Mrs. Rogers was a cleaning woman and she has left the
