"Now, _think_," said he--"think as you never thought before--how to get rid of that Ugly-Wugly."
Every one thought, but their brains were tired with anxiety and distress, and the thoughts they thought were, as Mabel said, not worth thinking, let alone saying.
"I suppose Jimmy's all right," said Kathleen anxiously.
"Oh, _he's_ all right: he's got the ring," said Gerald.
"I hope he won't go wishing anything rotten," said Mabel, but Gerald urged her to shut up and let him think.
"I think I think best sitting down," he said, and sat; "and sometimes you can think best aloud. The Ugly-Wugly's _real_--don't make any mistake about that. And he got made real inside that passage. If we could get him back there he might get changed again, and then we could take the coats and things back."
"Isn't there any other way?" Kathleen asked; and Mabel, more candid, said bluntly: "I'm not going into that passage, so there!"
"Afraid! In broad daylight," Gerald sneered.
"It wouldn't be broad daylight in there," said Mabel, and Kathleen shivered.
"If we went to him and suddenly tore his coat off," said she--"he _is_ only coats--he couldn't go on being real then."
"_Couldn't_ he!" said Gerald. "You don't know what he's like under the coat."
Kathleen shivered again. And all this time the sun was shining gaily and the white statues and the green trees and the fountains and terraces looked as cheerfully romantic as a scene in a play.
"Any way," said Gerald, "we'll try to get him back, and shut the door. That's the most we can hope for. And then apples, and 'Robinson Crusoe' or the 'Swiss Family,' or any book you like that's got no magic in it. Now, we've just got to do it. And he's not horrid now; _really_ he isn't. He's real, you see."
"I suppose that makes all the difference," said Mabel, and tried to feel that perhaps it did.
"And it's broad daylight--just look at the sun," Gerald insisted. "Come on!"
He took a hand of each, and they walked resolutely towards the bank of rhododendrons behind which Jimmy and the Ugly-Wugly had been told to wait, and as they went Gerald said: "He's real"--"The sun's shining"--"It'll all be over in a minute." And he said these things again and again, so that there should be no mistake about them.