Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/195

Speculation of the House-Agent the maddest thing is the most likely. The second is to remember that very plain literal fact always seems fantastic. If Keith had taken a little brick box of a house in Clapham, with nothing but railings in front of it, and had written 'The Elms' over it, you wouldn't have thought there was anything fantastic about that. Simply because it was a great, blaring, swaggering lie, you would have believed it."

"Drink your wine, gentlemen," said Keith, laughing, "for this confounded wind will upset it."

We drank, and as we did so, although the hanging house, by a cunning mechanism, swung only slightly, we knew that the great head of the elm-tree swayed in the sky like a stricken thistle. 175