awkward.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” said Gerald, “just waiting under the balcony? My uncle is so very mad. If he were to see—see any strangers—I mean, even aristocratic ones—I couldn’t answer for the consequences.”

“Perhaps,” said the flower-hatted lady nervously, “it would be better for us to try and find a lodging ourselves?”

“I wouldn’t advise you to,” said Gerald as grimly as he knew how; “the police here arrest all strangers. It’s the new law the Liberals have just made,” he added convincingly, “and you’d get the sort of lodging you wouldn’t care for—I couldn’t bear to think of you in a prison dungeon,” he added tenderly.

“I ah wi oo er papers,” said the respectable Ugly-Wugly, and added something that sounded like “disgraceful state of things.”

However, they ranged themselves under the iron balcony. Gerald gave one last look at them and wondered, in his secret heart, why he was not frightened, though in his outside mind he was congratulating himself on his bravery. For the things did look rather horrid. In that light it was hard to believe that they were really only clothes and pillows and sticks—with no insides. As he went up the steps he heard them talking among themselves—in that strange language of theirs, all oo’s and ah’s; and he thought he distinguished the voice of the respectable Ugly-Wugly saying, “Most gentlemanly lad,” and the wreathed-hatted lady answering warmly: “Yes, indeed.”

The coloured-glass door closed behind him. Behind him was the yard, peopled by seven impossible creatures. Before him lay the silent house, peopled, as he knew very well, by five human beings as frightened as human beings could be. You think, perhaps, that Ugly-Wuglies are nothing to be frightened of That’s only because you have never seen one come alive. You must make one—any old suit of your father’s, and a hat that he isn’t wearing, a bolster or two, a painted paper face, a few sticks, and a pair of boots will do the trick; get your father to lend you a wishing ring, give it back to him when it has done its work, and see how you feel then.

Of course the reason why Gerald was not afraid was that he had the ring; and, as you have seen, the wearer of that is not frightened by anything unless he touches that thing. But Gerald knew well enough how the others must be feeling. That was why he stopped for a moment in the hall to try and imagine what would have been most soothing to him if he had been as terrified as he knew they were.

“Cathy! I say! What ho, Jimmy! Mabel ahoy!” he cried in a loud, cheerful voice that sounded very unreal to himself.

The dining-room door opened a cautious inch.

“I say—such larks!” Gerald went on, shoving gently at the door with his shoulder. “Look out! what are you keeping the door shut for?”

“Are you—alone?” asked Kathleen in hushed, breathless tones.

“Yes, of course. Don’t be a duffer!”

The door opened, revealing three scared faces and the disarranged chairs where that odd audience had sat.

“Where are they? Have you unwished them? We heard them talking. Horrible!”

“They’re in the yard,” said Gerald with the best imitation of joyous excitement that he could manage. “It is such fun! They’re just like real people, quite kind and jolly. It’s the most ripping lark. Don’t let on to Mademoiselle and Eliza. I’ll square them. Then Kathleen and Jimmy must go to bed, and I’ll see Mabel home, and as soon as we get outside I must find some sort of lodging for the Ugly-Wuglies-they are such fun though. I do wish you could all go with me.”

“Fun?” echoed Kathleen dismally and doubting.

“Perfectly killing,” Gerald asserted resolutely. “Now, you just listen to what I say to Mademoiselle and Eliza, and back me up for all you’re worth.”

“But,” said Mabel, “you can’t mean that you’re going to leave me alone directly we get out, and go off with those horrible creatures. They look like fiends.”

“You wait till you’ve seen them close,” Gerald advised. “Why, they’re just ordinary—the first thing one of them did was to ask me to recommend it to a good hotel! I couldn’t understand it at first, because it has no roof to its mouth, of course.”

It was a mistake to say that, Gerald knew it at once.

Mabel and Kathleen were holding hands in a way that plainly showed how a few moments ago they had been clinging to each other in an agony of terror. Now they clung