Thousand: Two Hundred Ninety-Seven

author of a well-thumbed, gilt-edged, green leather bound volume of futures the fisher gnome had laid out on the little round gazebo table, a yellow silk ribbon marking the page he most wanted to show his host. The fisher gnome snatched from the tea tray as it wobbled a pitcher of milk that threatened to spill, thus catching a few freed drops with his fluffy beard, and preventing a lamentable situation that might have involved tears, the garden gnome being, the fisher gnome seemed to recall, one of the sensitive multiply removed cousins. When the garden gnome set the tray