"THEN I'LL MAKE YOU!" HE SAID, CATCHING HOLD OF OSWALD.
Then Dora said very primly and speaking rather slowly, and she was very pale—
"I think it would be lovely to fly. Will you just show me how the flying-machine looks when it is unfolded?"
The gentleman dropped Oswald, and Dora made "Go! go" with her lips without speaking, while he began to unfold the flying-machine. We others went, Oswald lingering last, and then in an instant Dora had nipped out of the room and banged the door and locked it.
"To the Mill!" she cried, and we ran like mad, and got in and barred the big door, and went up to the first floor, and looked out of the big window to warn off Mrs. Beale.
And we thumped Dora on the back, and Dicky called her a Sherlock Holmes, and Noël said she was a heroine.
"It wasn't anything," Dora said, just before she began to cry, "only I remember reading that you must pretend to humour them, and then get away, for of course I saw at once he was a lunatic. Oh, how awful it might have been! He could have made us all jump out of the attic window, and there would have been no one left to tell Father. Oh! oh!" and then the crying began.
But we were proud of Dora, and I am sorry we make fun of her sometimes, but it is difficult not to.
We decided to signal the first person that passed, and we got Alice to take off her red flannel petticoat for a signal.