"We've had that before and you had your silly wish," said Mabel,
more and more excited. "I say it isn't a wishing-ring. I say it's a ring
that makes the wearer four yards high."
She had caught up the ring as she spoke, and even as she spoke the
ring showed high above the children's heads on the finger of an
impossible Mabel, who was, indeed, twelve feet high.
"Now you've done it!" said Gerald and he was right. It was in vain
that Mabel asserted that the ring was a wishing-ring. It quite
clearly wasn't; it was what she had said it was.
"And you can't tell at all how long the effect will last," said Gerald.
"Look at the invisibleness." This is difficult to do, but the others
understood him.
"It may last for days," said Kathleen. "Oh, Mabel, it was silly of
you!"
"That's right, rub it in," said Mabel bitterly; "you should have
believed me when I said it was what I said it was. Then I shouldn't
have had to show you, and I shouldn't be this silly size. What am I
to do now, I should like to know?"
"We must conceal you till you get your right size again that's all,"
said Gerald practically.
"Yes but where?" said Mabel, stamping a foot twenty-four inches
long.
"In one of the empty rooms. You wouldn't be afraid?"
"Of course not," said Mabel. "Oh, I do wish we'd just put the ring
back and left it."
"Well, it wasn't us that didn't," said Jimmy, with more truth than
grammar.
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