Everywhere reigned confusion worse confounded. Wires were cut, batteries disconnected, wreck and ruin faced him on every side. The Wizard smote his breast and fairly wept with rage.
“Call me the Wizard of Was,” he ejaculated, “for nobody but a good-for-nothing old back number would have gone off and left that minx to get in her fine work here.”
“The Wizard of Was! The Wizard of Was!” a mocking voice cried out of the darkness. And the terrified Wizard jumped to his feet, while a peal of unearthly laughter rang through the room. The next moment he sat down again, much relieved. The parrot had fluttered in after him quite unobserved, and, perched on the high mantel-shelf, was imitating her master at pleasure. Hearing the familiar voice, the gargoyles began to scratch and snarl at the door. They considered it very unfair that the parrot should be allowed inside while they were banished to outer darkness.
“Shut up!” he commanded, fiercely throwing his words at the parrot like shots from a gun. And then, “Lie down there, will you?” this accompanied with a vigorous slap applied to the top of his head, for his scalp-lock had suddenly lifted itself erect and was standing straight up in the air.
“You don’t like the looks of things, hey? Well, I don’t either. But just mind your own affairs. I’ll attend to the rest.” Then pulling himself vigorously together, he set to work to repair the damage as best he could, although he foresaw plenty of hard work ahead of him before the sun could shine out again. Right well he knew that his reputation as a wizard would be gone forever did the present state of affairs continue for any length of time, and while he worked, he concocted a story which he intended to give out to the public on the morrow.
As far as his wife was concerned, he had no doubt that she was wandering about in the upper darkness at the very top of the tower, for it never occurred to him that she could have escaped. He supposed that she had merely climbed out of one window and into another, and so effected an entrance to his rooms where was kept all the electric machinery with which he manipulated the sun.
While he was fussing and fuming, raging at the parrot and scolding the gargoyles, his pretty little wife was in close confab with Sally and Bedelia.
“I don’t exactly understand about that letter tree,” Sally remarked, as she softly scratched the little bear’s fuzzy ears and at the same time gently patted Nellie’s little hand that lay upon her knee.
The three were stretched cosily on the Polar Bear rug in front of the glowing grate, having put on kimonos and let down their back hair—at least, all but Bedelia who wore her usual fur costume.