"You want a hotel?" Gerald repeated stupidly, "a good hotel?"
"A oo ho el," reiterated the painted lips.
"I'm awfully sorry," Gerald went on one can always be polite, of course, whatever happens, and politeness came natural to him "but all our hotels shut so early about eight, I think."
"Och em er," said the Ugly-Wugly. Gerald even now does not understand how that practical joke hastily wrought of hat, overcoat, paper face and limp hands could have managed, by just being alive, to become perfectly respectable, apparently about fifty years old, and obviously well known and respected in his own suburb the kind of man who travels first class and smokes expensive cigars. Gerald knew this time, without need of repetition, that the Ugly-Wugly had said: "Knock 'em up."
"You can't," Gerald explained; "they re all stone deaf every single person who keeps a hotel in this town. It's," he wildly plunged "it's a County Council law. Only deaf people are allowed to keep hotels. It's because of the hops in the beer," he found himself adding; "you know, hops are so good for ear-ache."
"I 0 wy ollo oo," said the respectable Ugly-Wugly; and Gerald was not surprised to find that the thing did "not quite follow him."
"It is a little difficult at first," he said. The other Ugly-Wuglies were crowding round. The lady in the poke bonnet said Gerald found he was getting quite clever at understanding the conversation of those who had no roofs to their mouths:
"If not a hotel, a lodging."
"My lodging is on the cold ground," sang itself unbidden and unavailing in Gerald's ear. Yet stay was it unavailing?
"I do know a lodging," he said slowly, "but ," The tallest of the Ugly-Wuglies pushed forward. He was dressed in the old brown overcoat and top-hat which always hung on the school hat-stand to discourage possible burglars by deluding them into the idea that there was a gentleman-of-the-house, and that he was at home. He had an air at once more sporting and less reserved than that of the first speaker, and anyone could see that he was not quite a gentleman.