The Mayor slapped his thigh with a loud report. "Lawdy," he yelled. "She's a sport. She will 'ave 'er joke."
Miss MacBee laughed hysterically and very loudly.
Mr. Darnby Frere said "My word" rather cautiously several times, and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He rather thought everybody was pulling his leg, but could not be sure.
When Sarah Brown and Richard, followed by the Dog David, reached the Mitten Island Ferry, after travelling slowly by moonlight, they were surprised to see a great crowd of people banked up on the Island, and one man in the uniform of a policeman, standing alone on the mainland. About ten yards from land the ferryman sat in his boat, rowing gently to keep himself stationary in the current.
"You'll 'ave to come to shore now," said the policeman, in the tone of one exhausted by long argument. "'Ere's some more parties wanting to cross." He turned to Richard. "Look 'ere, mate," he said. "I'm 'ere in the discharge of my dooty, and this ferryman is obstructin' me."
The ferryman said: "If the King of England--why, if the two ghosts of Queen Victoria and Albert the Good--was waiting to cross now, I wouldn't come in for them, not if it was going to give you a chance to set foot on Mitten Island."
The crowd across the river, divining that a climax of defiance was being reached, shouted: "Yah, yah," in unison.
"Is either of you parties an 'ouse'older on Mitten Island?" asked the policeman of Sarah Brown and Richard.
"I am," said Richard, to his companion's surprise.
"Can you give me any information regarding the whereabouts of a cherecter known under any of these names: Iris 'Yde, T.B. Watkins, Hangela the Witch, possibly a male in female disguise, believed to conduct a general shop and boardin' 'ouse on Mitten Island?"
"There is only one shop on Mitten Island," said Richard. "And one boarding house. All in one. I own it. I can recite you the prospectus if you like. I have a superintendent there. I have known her all my life. I did not know she was believed to be a male in female disguise. I did not know she had any name at all, let alone half-a-dozen."
The policeman seemed to be troubled all the time by mosquitoes. He slapped his face and his ears and the back of his neck. He succeeded in killing one insect upon the bridge of his nose, and left it there by mistake, a strangely ignoble corpse. Sarah Brown suspected Richard of some responsibility for this untimely persecution.