Two distant
doors banged, Mademoiselle's door and Eliza's door.
"Curtain! curtain! quick!" cried Beauty-Mabel, in a voice that
wasn't Mabel's or the Beauty's. "Jerry those things have come alive.
Oh, whatever shall we do?"
Gerald in his hearthrugs leaped to his feet. Again that flat padded
applause marked the swish of cloths on clothes-line as Jimmy and
Kathleen drew the curtains.
"What's up?" they asked as they drew.
"You've done it this time!" said Gerald to the pink, perspiring
Mabel. "Oh, bother these strings!"
"Can't you burst them? I've done it?" retorted Mabel. "I like that!"
"More than I do," said Gerald.
"Oh, it's all right," said Mabel. "Come on. We must go and pull the
things to pieces then they can't go on being alive."
"It's your fault, anyhow," said Gerald with every possible absence
of gallantry. "Don't you see? It's turned into a wishing ring. I knew
something different was going to happen. Get my knife out of my
pocket this string's in a knot. Jimmy, Cathy, those Ugly-Wuglies
have come alive because Mabel wished it. Cut out and pull them to
pieces."
Jimmy and Cathy peeped through the curtain and recoiled with
white faces and staring eyes. "Not me!" was the brief rejoinder of
Jimmy. Cathy said, "Not much!" And she meant it, anyone could
see that.
And now, as Gerald, almost free of the hearthrugs, broke his
thumb-nail on the stiffest blade of his knife, a thick rustling and a
sharp, heavy stumping sounded beyond the curtain.
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