"You're a beast, that's what you are! I don't need to be threatened to make me brave. I _am_."
"Mabel," said Gerald, in low, thrilling tones, for he saw that the time had come to sound another note, "I _know_ you're brave. I _believe_ in you. That's why I've arranged it like this. I'm certain you've got the heart of a lion under that black-and-white exterior. Can I trust you? To the death?"
Mabel felt that to say anything but "Yes" was to throw away a priceless reputation for courage. So "Yes" was what she said.
"Then wait here. You're close to the lamp. And when you see me coming with _them_ remember they're as harmless as serpents--I mean doves. Talk to them just like you would to any one else. See?"
He turned to leave her, but stopped at her natural question:
"What hotel did you say you were going to take them to?"
"Oh, Jimminy!" the harassed Gerald caught at his hair with both hands. "There! you see, Mabel, you're a help already"; he had, even at that moment, some tact left. "I clean forgot! I meant to ask you--isn't there any lodge or anything in the Castle grounds where I could put them for the night? The charm will break, you know, some time, like being invisible did, and they'll just be a pack of coats and things that we can easily carry home any day. Is there a lodge or anything?"
"There's a secret passage," Mabel began--but at that moment the yard-door opened and an Ugly-Wugly put out its head and looked anxiously down the street.
"Righto!"--Gerald ran to meet it. It was all Mabel could do not to run in an opposite direction with an opposite motive. It was all she could do, but she did it, and was proud of herself as long as ever she remembered that night.
And now, with all the silent precaution necessitated by the near presence of an extremely insane uncle, the Ugly-Wuglies, a grisly band, trooped out of the yard door.
"Walk on your toes, dear," the bonneted Ugly-Wugly whispered to the one with a wreath; and even at that thrilling crisis Gerald wondered how she could, since the toes of one foot were but the end of a golf club and of the other the end of a hockey-stick.
Mabel felt that there was no shame in retreating to the lamp-post at the street corner, but, once there, she made herself halt--and no one but Mabel will ever know how much making that took. Think of it--to stand there, firm and quiet, and wait for those hollow, unbelievable things to come up to her, clattering on the pavement with their stumpy feet or borne along noiselessly, as in the case of the flower-hatted lady, by a skirt that touched the ground, and had, Mabel knew very well, nothing at all inside it.