“I say,” a youth who had always been fair-haired broke that silence, “it’s only fancy of course—something wrong with my eyes—but you chaps do look so rum.”
“Rum,” said his friend. “Look at you. You in a sash! My hat! And your hair’s gone black and you’ve got a beard. It’s my belief we’ve been poisoned. You do look a jackape.”
“Old Levinstein don’t look so bad. But how was it done—that’s what I want to know. How was it done? Is it conjuring, or what?”
“I think it is chust a ver’ bad tream,” said old Levinstein to his clerk; “all along Bishopsgate I haf seen the gommon people have their hants full of food—goot food. Oh yes, without doubt a very bad tream!”
“Then I’m dreaming too, sir,” said the clerk, looking down at his legs with an expression of loathing. “I see my feet in beastly sandals as plain as plain.”
“All that goot food wasted,” said old Mr Levinstein. A bad tream—a bad tream.”
The Members of the Stock Exchange are said to be at all times a noisy lot. But the noise they made now to express their disgust at the costumes of ancient Babylon was far louder than their ordinary row. One had to shout before one could hear oneself speak.
“I only wish,” said the clerk who thought it was conjuring—he was quite close to the children and they trembled, because they knew that whatever he wished would come true. “I only wish we knew who’d done it.”
And, of course, instantly they did know, and they pressed round the Queen.
“Scandalous! Shameful! Ought to be put down by law. Give her in charge. Fetch the police,” two or three voices shouted at once.