"Wa I wo oo oh," he began, but the lady Ugly-Wugly in the flower-wreathed hat interrupted him. She spoke more distinctly than the others, owing, as Gerald found afterwards, to the fact that her mouth had been drawn open, and the flap cut from the aperture had been folded back so that she really had something like a roof to her mouth, though it was only a paper one.
"What I want to know," Gerald understood her to say, "is where are the carriages we ordered?"
"I don't know," said Gerald, "but I'll find out. But we ought to be moving," he added; "you see, the performance is over, and they want to shut up the house and put the lights out. Let's be moving."
"Eh ech e oo-ig," repeated the respectable Ugly-Wugly, and stepped towards the front door.
"Oo urn oo," said the flower-wreathed one; and Gerald assures me that her vermilion lips stretched in a smile.
"I shall be delighted," said Gerald with earnest courtesy, "to do anything, of course. Things do happen so awkwardly when you least expect it. I could go with you, and get you a lodging, if you'd only wait a few moments in the in the yard. It's quite a superior sort of yard, he went on, as a wave of surprised disdain passed over their white paper faces not a common yard, you know; the pump," he added madly, "has just been painted green all over, and the dustbin is enamelled iron."
The Ugly-Wuglies turned to each other in consultation, and Gerald gathered that the greenness of the pump and the enamelled character of the dustbin made, in their opinion, all the difference.
"I'm awfully sorry," he urged eagerly, "to have to ask you to wait, but you see I've got an uncle who's quite mad, and I have to give him his gruel at half-past nine. He won't feed out of any hand but mine." Gerald did not mind what he said. The only people one is allowed to tell lies to are the Ugly-Wuglies; they are all clothes and have no insides, because they are not human beings, but only a sort of very real visions, and therefore cannot be really deceived, though they may seem to be.
Through the back door that has the blue, yellow, red, and green glass in it, down the iron steps into the yard, Gerald led the way, and the Ugly-Wuglies trooped after him. Some of them had boots, but the ones whose feet were only broomsticks or umbrellas found the open-work iron stairs very awkward.
"If you wouldn't mind," said Gerald, "just waiting under the balcony? My uncle is so very mad. If he were to see see any strangers I mean, even aristocratic ones I couldn't answer for the consequences."