If
only Mabel was of a size that one could conveniently take home
with one! Most likely, at this hour of enchantments, she was.
Kathleen, heartened by the thought, hurried on. She passed through
the rhododendron bushes, remembered the pointed painted paper
face that had looked out from the glossy leaves, expected to be
frightened and wasn't. She found Mabel easily enough, and much
more easily than she would have done had Mabel been as she
wished to find her. For quite a long way off in the moonlight, she
could see that long and worm-like form, extended to its full twelve
feet and covered with coats and trousers and waistcoats. Mabel
looked like a drain-pipe that has been covered in sacks in frosty
weather. Kathleen touched her long cheek gently, and she woke.
"What's up?" she said sleepily.
"It's only me," Kathleen explained.
"How cold your hands are!" said Mabel.
"Wake up," said Kathleen, "and let's talk."
"Can't we go home now? I'm awfully tired, and it's so long since
tea-time."
"You're too long to go home yet," said Kathleen sadly, and then
Mabel remembered.
She lay with closed eyes then suddenly she stirred and cried out:
"Oh! Cathy, I feel so funny like one of those horn snakes when you
make it go short to get it into its box. I am yes I know I am "
She was; and Kathleen, watching her, agreed that it was exactly
like the shortening of a horn spiral snake between the closing
hands of a child.
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