"The others must have
missed the way last night in the passage. They never found the
hotel."
"Did you?" asked Gerald blankly.
"Of course," said the Ugly-Wugly. "Most respectable, exactly as
you said. Then when I came away I didn't come the front way
because I wanted to revisit this sylvan scene by daylight, and the
hotel people didn't seem to know how to direct me to it I found the
others all at this door, very angry. They'd been here all night, trying
to get out. Then the door opened this gentleman must have opened
it and before I could protect him, that underbred man in the high
hat you remember ,"
Gerald remembered.
"Hit him on the head, and he fell where you see him. The others
dispersed, and I myself was just going for assistance when I saw
you."
Here Jimmy was discovered to be in tears and Kathleen white as
any drawing-paper.
"What's the matter, my little man?" said the respectable
Ugly-Wugly kindly. Jimmy passed instantly from tears to yells.
"Here, take the ring!" said Gerald in a furious whisper, and thrust it
on to Jimmy's hot, damp, resisting finger. Jimmy's voice stopped
short in the middle of a howl. And Gerald in a cold flash realized
what it was that Mabel had gone through the night before. But it
was daylight, and Gerald was not a coward.
"We must find the others," he said.
"I imagine," said the elderly Ugly-Wugly, "that they have gone to
bathe.
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