For though not a clever woman, she was not stupid
enough to be able to believe any one of the eleven fancy
explanations which the distracted Mabel offered in the course of
the morning. The first (which makes twelve) of these explanations
was The Truth, and of course the aunt was far too clever to believe
That!
It was show-day at Yalding Castle, and it seemed good to the
children to go and visit Mabel, and, as Gerald put it, to mingle
unsuspected with the crowd; to gloat over all the things which they
knew and which the crowd didn't know about the castle and the
sliding panels, the magic ring and the statues that came alive.
Perhaps one of the pleasantest things about magic happenings is
the feeling which they give you of knowing what other people not
only don't know but wouldn't, so to speak, believe if they did.
On the white road outside the gates of the castle was a dark
spattering of breaks and wagonettes and dogcarts. Three or four
waiting motor-cars puffed fatly where they stood, and bicycles
sprawled in heaps along the grassy hollow by the red brick wall.
And the people who had been brought to the castle by the breaks
and wagonettes, and dog-carts and bicycles and motors, as well as
those who had walked there on their own unaided feet, were
scattered about the grounds, or being shown over those parts of the
castle which were, on this one day of the week, thrown open to
visitors.
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