Carol walked very fast on one side of her. I walked very fast on the other. Carol carried the book. He carried it wide open so as to be all ready any moment. I carried the pencil.
"Can you tell me," said the Lady, "just why you and your brother have picked upon me as the first victim of your most astonishing interrogations?"
"Because you are the only Lady we ever saw in our lives that we didn't know who she was!" I explained. "And that makes it more interesting!"
"O—h," said the Lady. She gave a queer little gasp. It was the Hotel happening! She ran up the hotel steps. There was a Gentleman waiting for her at the top of the steps. He was a tall Gentleman with a very cross mustache. The Lady whispered something to him. He shook his mustache at us.
"Get out of here, you Young Scamps!" he cried. "Get out of here, I say! Get out!"
No one had ever shaken his mustache at us before. We sat down on the step to think about it.
The Gentleman ran off to call the Hotel Proprietor.
The Lady looked a little sorry. She came running back. She stooped down. She took the book from Carol. And the pencil from me. She laughed a little.
"You funny—funny children," she said. "What is it you want to know? The Most Beautiful Smell in the whole wide world,—is that it?—The Most Beautiful Smell in the whole wide world?" She looked back over her shoulder. She wrote very fast. Her cheeks looked pink. She banged the book together just the first second she had finished. She pulled my ear. "I'm—I'm sorry," she said.
"Oh, that's all right," I assured her. "We'll be round and write the rest of the book some other day!"