"The Enchanted Castle" by E. Nesbit, Chapters 5–6

The assignation was ten-thirty, wasn't it?

The melancholy Mabel will await the tryst without success, as far as this one is concerned.

And all the way Gerald's lips were shut into a thin, obstinate line.

Having left his missive to do its warning work, Gerald de Sherlock Holmes sped back, wrapped in invisibility, to the spot where by the light of their dark-lanterns the burglars were still—still burgling with the utmost punctuality and despatch.

The three miscreants instantly sought the shelter of the groves and passed stealthily among the rhododendrons and across the park...

"Halves," said Johnson promptly, "and a clout 'longside your head if you was coming any of your nonsense over me."

And when you've caught the burglars and got the swag back you just give me a quid for luck.

"So help me!"—Johnson was pensive and doubtful still—"so help me! you couldn't have made all this up out of your head."

In and out and round about ran the file of children, over heaps of logs, under the jutting ends of piled planks, and just as the policeman's heavy boots trod the towing-path Gerald halted at the end of a little landing-stage of rotten boards, with a rickety handrail, cried "Pax!" and blew his nose with loud fervour.

"Courage, promptitude, and despatch. That's the place," and was off again, the active leader of an active procession.

"Would you mind if I looked?" Mabel's eyes implored her little hostess.

They shook the curtains, they explored the corners, and found dust and flue, but no ring.

"Well—I can't," said the wretched gentleman friend.

"You won't tell her about me carrying on this way, will you, miss? It might set her against me if she thought I was liable to fits, which I never was from a child."

She had but little language left when they removed her bandage under a weeping willow where a statue of Diana, bow in hand, stood poised on one toe, a most unsuitable attitude for archery, I have always thought.

"'E's lep' into the water," said Eliza in a rapt voice.

But it was Eliza, dishevelled, breathless, her hair coming down, her collar crooked, her dress twisted and disordered, who suddenly held out a hand—a hand that they could see; and in the hand, plainly visible in the moonlight, the dark circle of the magic ring.

...every Friday the stalls and the awnings and the green umbrellas were pitched, and poultry, pork, pottery, vegetables, drapery, sweets, toys, tools, mirrors, and all sorts of other interesting merchandise were spread out on trestle tables, piled on carts whose horses were stabled and whose shafts were held in place by piled wooden cases, or laid out, as in the case of crockery and hardware, on the bare flagstones of the market-place.

Then discreetly Gerald knocked at the door of the drawing-room, where Mademoiselle seemed to sit all day.

"No," said Mabel, flushing hotly, "I'm nothing grand at all. I'm Lord Yalding's housekeeper's niece."

"He comes then never to his château?"

Your friend—Mabelle, yes—will be your convivial, and in her honour we will make a little feast.

You know, governesses never have more than the meanest pittance, just enough to sustain life, and here she is spending her little all on us.

The miscreants must have received warning from a confederate, for the admirable preparations to arrest them as they returned for their ill-gotten plunder were unavailing.

The miscreants must have received warning from a confederate, for the admirable preparations to arrest them as they returned for their ill-gotten plunder were unavailing.

She served out the cakes and tarts with a liberal hand, made wreaths of the flowers for all their heads—she was not eating much herself—drank the health of Mabel, as the guest of the day, in the beautiful pink drink that comes from mixing raspberry vinegar and soda-water, and actually persuaded Jimmy to wear his wreath, on the ground that the Greek gods as well as the goddesses always wore wreaths at a feast.

Mademoiselle told them stories of her own school-days when she was "a quite little girl with two tight tresses—so," and when they could not understand the tresses, called for paper and pencil and drew the loveliest little picture of herself when she was a child with two short fat pig-tails sticking out from her head like knitting-needles from a ball of dark worsted.

"Draw us the front of a theatre," said Gerald tactfully, "a French theatre."

Had Mademoiselle any rouge? They had always heard that French ladies—No. Mademoiselle hadn't—and to judge by the colour of her face, Mademoiselle didn't need it.

They had the fans and the handkerchiefs and some large sheets of expensive drawing-paper out of the school cupboard, and Mademoiselle's best sable paint-brush and her paint-box.

Eliza, still giggling, pushed through the lines of chairs, knocking off the hat of one of the visitors as she did so, and turned up the three incandescent burners.

The seven members of the audience seated among the wilderness of chairs had, indeed, no insides to speak of. Their bodies were bolsters and rolled-up blankets, their spines were broom-handles, and their arm and leg bones were hockey sticks and umbrellas.

Their eyebrows were furious with lamp-black frowns—their eyes the size, and almost the shape, of five-shilling pieces, and on their lips and cheeks had been spent much crimson lake and nearly the whole of a half-pan of vermilion.

"Go on, Jimmy,—don't forget the Merchant has to be pompous and use long words."

Jimmy, enlarged by pillows under Gerald's best overcoat, which had been intentionally bought with a view to his probable growth during the two years which it was intended to last him, a Turkish towel turban on his head and an open umbrella over it, opened the first act in a simple and swift soliloquy...

A white nightdress girt with a white apron and two red carnations in Mabel's black hair left no doubt as to which of the three was Beauty.

Mabel, in her Princess clothes, was a resplendent Beauty; and Gerald a Beast who wore the drawing-room hearthrugs with an air of indescribable distinction.

"Here, Mabel, catch hold," Gerald appealed from under the weight of a towel-horse, the tea-urn, the tea-tray, and the green baize apron of the boot boy, which together with four red geraniums from the landing, the pampas-grass from the drawing-room fireplace, and the indiarubber plants from the drawing-room window were to represent the fountains and garden of the last act.

He saw, in fancy, Mabel's wish undone, and the empty hall strewed with limp bolsters, hats, umbrellas, coats and gloves, prone abject properties from which the brief life had gone out for ever.

A limp hand gesticulated.