Like the full, deep note of a huge bell, Mr. Marrapit's voice came booming through the fearful atmosphere.
Boom and wriggle touched George back to action from the fear into which the invisible something and the fearful panorama of faces had struck him.
After all--let have happened what might have happened--he had the cat!
He swung the creature round into his hands; outstretched it. He took a step forward. “Uncle!” he cried, “uncle, I have found the Rose!”
From Mary there came a violent double sniff.
George stood perfectly still; the unseen horror he felt to be rushing upon him, but it remained invisible. With considerably less confidence he repeated:
“Hem!” said Mrs. Major on a yet shorter jerk; from Mary a double sniff yet more violent.
Alarmed, his nerves unstrung, with straining ears George listened. The tense atmosphere made him ajump for outward sounds.
“Hark!” boomed Mr. Marrapit; lowered the warning hand; at George directed a long finger. “Are you not afraid that you will hear upon the threshold the footsteps of the young men who will come in, wind you up, and carry you out?”
Mr. Marrapit poked the extended finger towards him. “Ananias!” he boomed. He poked at my quivering Mary. “Sapphira!”
George recovered. “Is this a joke?” he asked. “I tell you--look for yourself--I have found the Rose.”
Mr. Marrapit stooped to Mrs. Major's lap, hidden by the table. With a most queenly creature in his arms he stood upright. “Here is the Rose,” said he.
Instantly George forgot all that had immediately passed. Instantly he remembered that a bogus Rose was what he fully expected to see. Instantly fear fled. Instantly assurance returned.
In a full and confident note, “Uncle,” he said, “you have been deceived!”
Mr. Marrapit with one arm clasped to his breast the cat he had raised from Mrs. Major's lap. Alternately raising and lowering the other hand, his white hair seeming to stream, his eyes flashing, he took on, to George's eyes, the appearance of an enraged prophet bellowing over the cities of the Plain.
“I _have_ been deceived!” he cried. “You are right. Though you have the forked tongue of an adder, yet you speak truly. I have been deceived. Woe is me for I have been most wickedly deceived by those who eat of my bread, who lie beneath my roof. I have cherished vipers in my bosom, and they have stung me. Bitterly have I been deceived.”