Gerald had the best of reasons for knowing it.
The speaker's coat had no shoulders inside it only the cross-bar
that a jacket is slung on by careful ladies. The hand raised in
interrogation was not a hand at all; it was a glove lumpily stuffed
with pocket-handkerchiefs; and the arm attached to it was only
Kathleen's school umbrella. Yet the whole thing was alive, and
was asking a definite, and for anybody else, anybody who really
was a body, a reasonable question.
With a sensation of inward sinking, Gerald realized that now or
never was the time for him to rise to the occasion. And at the
thought he inwardly sank more deeply than before. It seemed
impossible to rise in the very smallest degree.
"I beg your pardon" was absolutely the best he could do; and the
painted, pointed paper face turned to him once more, and once
more said: "Aa 00 re o me me oo a oo ho el?"
"You want a hotel?" Gerald repeated stupidly, "a good hotel?"
"A oo ho el," reiterated the painted lips.
"I'm awfully sorry," Gerald went on one can always be polite, of
course, whatever happens, and politeness came natural to him "but
all our hotels shut so early about eight, I think."
"Och em er," said the Ugly-Wugly. Gerald even now does not
understand how that practical joke hastily wrought of hat,
overcoat, paper face and limp hands could have managed, by just
being alive, to become perfectly respectable, apparently about fifty
years old, and obviously well known and respected in his own
suburb the kind of man who travels first class and smokes
expensive cigars.
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