"Then I must ask the other side," said Velveteens. "Let me go--I'll undo that door and find out for myself."
"Tell him," said Mabel, speaking for the first time. "Never mind if he believes or not. We can't have them let out."
"Very well," said Gerald, "I'll tell him. Now look here, Mr. Bailiff, will you promise us on an English gentleman's word of honour--because, of course, I can see you're _that_, bailiff or not--will you promise that you won't tell any one what we tell you and that you won't have us put in a lunatic asylum, however mad we sound?"
"Yes," said the stranger, "I think I can promise that. But if you've been having a sham fight or anything and shoved the other side into that hole, don't you think you'd better let them out? They'll be most awfully frightened, you know. After all, I suppose they are only children."
"Wait till you hear," Gerald answered. "They're not children--not much! Shall I just tell about them or begin at the beginning?"
"The beginning, of course," said the stranger.
Mabel lifted her head from his velveteen shoulder and said, "Let me begin, then. I found a ring, and I said it would make me invisible. I said it in play. And it _did_. I was invisible twenty-one hours. Never mind where I got the ring. Now, Gerald, you go on."
Gerald went on; for quite a long time he went on, for the story was a splendid one to tell.
"And so," he ended, "we got them in there; and when seven hours are over, or fourteen, or twenty-one, or something with a seven in it, they'll just be old coats again. They came alive at half-past nine. _I_ think they'll stop being it in seven hours--that's half-past four. _Now_ will you let us go home?"
"I'll see you home," said the stranger in a quite new tone of exasperating gentleness. "Come--let's be going."
"You don't believe us," said Gerald. "Of course you don't. Nobody could. But I could make you believe if I chose."
All three stood up, and the stranger stared in Gerald's eyes till Gerald answered his thought.
"No, you aren't. But, come, you're an extraordinarily sensible boy; don't you think you may be sickening for a fever or something?"
"And Cathy and Jimmy and Mademoiselle and Eliza, and the man who said 'Guy Fawkes, swelp me!' and _you_, you saw them move--you heard them call out. Are you sickening for anything?"