"They're going out!" screamed Kathleen "walking out on their
umbrella and broomstick legs. You can't stop them, Jerry, they re
too awful!"
"Everybody in the town'll be insane by tomorrow night if we don't
stop them," cried Gerald. "Here, give me the ring I'll unwish them."
He caught the ring from the unresisting Mabel, cried, "I wish the
Uglies weren't alive," and tore through the door. He saw, in fancy,
Mabel's wish undone, and the empty hall strewed with limp
bolsters, hats, umbrellas, coats and gloves, prone abject properties
from which the brief life had gone out for ever. But the hall was
crowded with live things, strange things all horribly short as broom
sticks and umbrellas are short. A limp hand gesticulated. A pointed
white face with red cheeks looked up at him, and wide red lips
said something, he could not tell what. The voice reminded him of
the old beggar down by the bridge who had no roof to his mouth.
These creatures had no roofs to their mouths, of course they had no
"Aa 00 re o me me oo a oo ho el?" said the voice again. And it had
said it four times before Gerald could collect himself sufficiently
to understand that this horror alive, and most likely quite
uncontrollable was saying, with a dreadful calm, polite
persistence: "Can you recommend me to a good hotel?"
"Can you recommend me to a good hotel?" The speaker had no
inside to his head.
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