"Of course," said Jimmy in the silence and the darkness and the scent of old earth.
THERE is a curtain, thin as gossamer, clear as glass, strong as iron, that hangs for ever between the world of magic and the world that seems to us to be real. And when once people have found one of the little weak spots in that curtain which are marked by magic rings, and amulets, and the like, almost anything may happen. Thus it is not surprising that Mabel and Kathleen, conscientiously conducting one of the dullest dolls' tea-parties at which either had ever assisted, should suddenly, and both at once, have felt a strange, unreasonable, but quite irresistible desire to return instantly to the Temple of Flora--even at the cost of leaving the dolls' tea-service in an unwashed state, and only half the raisins eaten. They went--as one has to go when the magic impulse drives one--against their better judgment, against their wills almost.
And the nearer they came to the Temple of Flora, in the golden hush of the afternoon, the more certain each was that they could not possibly have done otherwise.
And this explains exactly how it was that when Gerald and Jimmy, holding hands in the darkness of the passage, uttered their first concerted yell, "just for the lark of the thing," that yell was instantly answered from outside.
A crack of light showed in that part of the passage where they had least expected the door to be. The stone door itself swung slowly open, and they were out of it, in the Temple of Flora, blinking in the good daylight, an unresisting prey to Kathleen's embraces and the questionings of Mabel.
"And you left that Ugly-Wugly loose in London," Mabel pointed out; "you might have wished it to be with you, too."
"It's all right where it is," said Gerald. "I couldn't think of everything. And besides, no, thank you! Now we'll go home and seal up the ring in an envelope."
"_I_ haven't done anything with the ring yet," said Kathleen.
"I shouldn't think you'd want to when you see the sort of things it does with you," said Gerald.
"It wouldn't do things like that if _I_ was wishing with it," Kathleen protested.
"Look here," said Mabel, "let's just put it back in the treasure-room and have done with it. I oughtn't ever to have taken it away, really. It's a sort of stealing. It's quite as bad, really, as Eliza borrowing it to astonish her gentleman friend with."