Moreover he had not paused to forage for his teeth, that always reposed comfortably at night in a glass of water on his wash-stand.
In his pink pajamas and pointed nightcap, he somehow looked absurdly like Peter Pan. A long and lean Peter Pan. A Peter Pan without any teeth.
This unexpected apparition so terrified the twins, unable as they were to progress as swiftly as the rest on account of their fancy clothes, that after one demoralized glance at the ancient vision in the doorway, they uttered a dismal squawk and hurled themselves unceremoniously over the banisters and down the flight of stairs. Tumbling and rolling over one another and bouncing like two rubber balls, down and down they went, and finally disappeared in the open door of the nursery.
Neither did Bedelia stay to consider the order of her going. She fled in disorder, dragging along the tiny cub, who, too sleepy either to resist or to help himself, was whimpering shrilly.
Peter Pan himself brought up the rear, hopping along as nimbly as the rest of them, but with his ideas concerning pajamas disorganized forever.
Meanwhile the short-sighted old man on the upper landing knew not what to believe, nor what manner of animal he was gazing upon.
“God bless my soul, but they looked like Sally’s bears!” he exclaimed. In another moment the thought that possibly some trained monkeys had escaped from the zoo and somehow effected an entrance into the house flashed across his mind.
He advanced to the rail and peered over it in order to catch another glimpse of the queer little figures now in full retreat. But being very near-sighted and having, in his haste, forgotten his spectacles, he miscalculated the distance, and in another moment was turning somersaults down the stairs in the wake of the Teddy bears, until he finally landed at the bottom with a lugubrious thump which for the moment deprived him of consciousness, while Rough House, roused by the commotion, added his shrill barking to the general confusion.
Now from the lower hall rose voices of Papa Doctor and mamma in terrified inquiry, demanding to know what upon earth was the matter.