Mrs. String-Darlington had a pony. She walked back and forth with the pony, and they often went up a hill. When she got to the top she always realised that the only thing to do was to go down again, which was a bit of an anti-climax.
   Hugh lived next door. He spent his evenings developing an attachment to Mrs. String-Darlington. By day he wore black and stood in the shadow of the gable end of his house. He was writing his memoirs in his head, but he'd already written them there. Events provided the first draft, and then his brain re-worked the events' version when it recorded them. It edited out a lot of details, and re-arranged things so they'd make sense. As he stood in the shadow of the gable, he was re-working them again in a third draft.
   One day he sat at the back of a red bus. It left the town and went out into the country. There were only four other people on the bus. It was winter, but he felt warm in the sun through the glass.
   He got off the bus on a quiet country road. He had reached the point in his mental memoirs where he was looking at small green animals with ice for eyes. He couldn't remember seeing them before. He thought that the bus journey, or the sun on the bus, or both, had affected his head. Some of the sentences in the second draft had been melted, and he was left with animals whose eyes would melt if they looked at the sun.
   He stood at the side of the road and looked out over long flat fields. He didn't know where he was, and he didn't know how to get home. He knew he should have stayed in the shade of the gable.
   He explained how he got out of this situation in the fourth draft, which he wrote on paper. Mrs. String-Darlington helped him write this bit, and this is what he wrote:
   I was stranded in the middle of nowhere and I found myself surrounded by little green animals with ice for eyes. Needless to say, I feared for my safety. But the fear disappeared and I saw only the continued health of my safety when I heard the familiar sound of hooves. It was Mrs. String-Darlington and her pony. The green animals showed no fear, but she knew exactly what to do to get rid of them. She got the pony to run from side to side, and the animals' eyes started to melt because they were moving from side to side so quickly as they followed Mrs. String-Darlington and her pony. They ran away. Mrs. String-Darlington and her pony then led me home to the shelter of my gable.