like, you know,” he added. “I give you the freedom of the place.”

“You’re the new bailiff, aren’t you?” said Mabel.

“Yes. How did you know?” he asked quickly; but they did not tell him how they knew. Instead, they found out which way he was going, and went the other way after warm handshakes and hopes on both sides that they would meet again soon.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Gerald, as they watched the tall, broad figure of the bailiff grow smaller across the hot green of the grass slope, “have you got any idea of how we’re going to spend the day? Because I have.”

The others hadn’t.

“We’ll get rid of that Ugly-Wugly—oh, we’ll find a way right enough—and directly we’ve done it we’ll go home and seal up the ring in an envelope so that its teeth’ll be drawn and it’ll be powerless to have unforeseen larks with us. Then we’ll get out on the roof, and have a quiet day—books and apples. I’m about fed up with adventures, so I tell you.”

The others told him the same thing.

“Now, think,” said he—“think as you never thought before—how to get rid of that Ugly-Wugly”

Everyone thought, but their brains were tired with anxiety and distress, and the thoughts they thought were, as Mabel said, not worth thinking, let alone saying.

“I suppose Jimmy’s all right,” said Kathleen anxiously.

“Oh, he’s all right: he’s got the ring,” said Gerald.

“I hope he won’t go wishing anything rotten,” said Mabel, but Gerald urged her to shut up and let him think.

“I think I think best sitting down,” he said, and sat; “and sometimes you can think best aloud. The Ugly-Wugly’s real—don’t make any mistake about that. And he got made real inside that passage. If we could get him back there he might get changed again, and then we could take the coats and things back.”

“Isn’t there any other way?” Kathleen asked; and Mabel, more candid, said bluntly: “I’m not going into that passage, so there!”

“Afraid! In broad daylight,” Gerald sneered.

“It wouldn’t be broad daylight in there,” said Mabel, and Kathleen shivered.

“If we went to him and suddenly tore his coat off,” said she—“he is only coats—he couldn’t go on being real then.”

“Couldn’t he!” said Gerald. “You don’t know what he’s like under the coat.”

Kathleen shivered again. And all this time the sun was shining gaily and the white statues and the green trees and the fountains and terraces looked as cheerfully romantic as a scene in a play.

“Anyway,” said Gerald, “we’ll try to get him back, and shut the door. That’s the most we can hope for. And then apples, and Robinson Crusoe or the Swiss Family, or any book you like that’s got no magic in it.8 Now, we’ve just got to do it. And he’s not horrid now; really he isn’t. He’s real, you see.”

“I suppose that makes all the difference,” said Mabel, and tried to feel that perhaps it did.

“And it’s broad daylight—just look at the sun,” Gerald insisted. “Come on!”

He took a hand of each, and they walked resolutely towards the bank of rhododendrons behind which Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly had been told to wait, and as they went Gerald said: “He’s real”—“The sun’s shining”—“It’ll all be over in a minute.” And he said these things again and again, so that there should be no mistake about them.

As they neared the bushes the shining leaves rustled, shivered, and parted, and before the girls had time to begin to hang back Jimmy came blinking out into the sunlight. The boughs closed behind him, and they did not stir or rustle for the appearance of anyone else. Jimmy was alone.

“Where is it?” asked the girls in one breath.

“Walking up and down in a fir-walk,” said Jimmy, “doing sums in a book. He says he’s most frightfully rich, and he’s got to get up to town to the Stocks or something—where they change papers into gold if you’re clever, he says. I should like to go to the Stocks-change, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t seem to care very much about changes,” said Gerald. “I’ve had enough. Show us where he is—we must get rid of him.”

“He’s got a motor-car,” Jimmy went on, parting the warm varnished-looking rhododendron leaves, “and a garden with a tennis-court and a lake and a carriage and pair, and he goes to Athens for his holiday sometimes, just like other people go to Margate.”

“The best thing,” said Gerald, following through the bushes, “will be to tell him the shortest way out is through