The next moment a chill swept her; the next, she felt a heavy hand upon her shoulder, and clumsy fingers busy with the buttons on the gingham dress.
"Tee! hee! hee! hee!"
It was the voice that had called from a distance. Hearing it now she felt a sudden, sickish, sinking feeling. She whirled.
A strange creature was kneeling behind her—a creature dressed in black sateen, and like no human being that she had ever met before. For it was two-faced!
One face (the front) was blowzy and freckled, with a small pug nose and a quarrelsome mouth. The other (the face on what, with ordinary persons, was the back of the head) was dark and forbidding, its nose a large brick-colored pug, the mouth underneath shaped most extraordinarily—not unlike a barrette, for it was wide and long, and square at the corners, and full of shining tortoise-shell teeth! But the creature had only one tongue. This was loose at both ends, so that there was one tip for her front face, and one for the back. But she had only one pair of eyes. These were reddish. They watched Gwendolyn boldly from the front; then rolled quickly to the rear to stare at the Man-Who-Makes-Faces.
At sight of the two-faced creature, Gwendolyn shrank away, frightened.
"Oh!—oh, my!" she faltered.
Both horrid mouths now bellowed hilariously. And the creature reached out a big hand.
"Look here, Gwendolyn!" it ordered. "You ain't goin'!"
Gwendolyn lifted terrified eyes for a second look at the brick-colored hair, the blowzy countenance. No possibility of doubt remained!