"It's just like life," she said; "I might just as well not have gone. However ," She knelt down at once and held the bottle under the sufferer's nose till he sneezed and feebly pushed her hand away with the faint question: "What's up now?"
"You've hurt your head," said Gerald. "Lie still."
"No more smelling-bottle," he said weakly, and lay.
Quite soon he sat up and looked round him. There was an anxious silence. Here was a grown-up who knew last night's secret, and none of the children were at all sure what the utmost rigour of the law might be in a case where people, no matter how young, made Ugly-Wuglies, and brought them to life dangerous, fighting, angry life. What would he say what would he do?" He said: "What an odd thing! Have I been insensible long?"
"Hours," said Mabel earnestly.
"Not long," said Kathleen.
"We don't know. We found you like it," said Gerald.
"I'm all right now," said the bailiff, and his eye fell on the blood-stained handkerchief. "I say, I did give my head a bang. And you've been giving me first aid. Thank you most awfully. But it is rum."
"What's rum?" politeness obliged Gerald to ask.
"Well, I suppose it isn't really rum I expect I saw you just before I fainted, or whatever it was but I've dreamed the most extraordinary dream while I've been insensible and you were in it."