"Good fellow," said Angel, and began to climb out.
"Now, you hand me The Seraph," he ordered, "and I'll attend to him."
I had some misgivings as I passed his plump, clinging little person through the window, and watched him make the perilous descent, but, in time, he reached the ground, and then I, too, stood beside the others, and the four of us scampered lightly down the street with no misgivings, and no fears.
Before the door of our own grocer, Simon made a halt.
"Must have somethin' wet," he gasped. "Ladder nearly floored me."
He took us in and treated us with princely unconcern to ginger beer and a jam puff apiece. As we sucked our beer through straws, I smiled to think of Mary Ellen, doubtless preparing bread and milk at home.
Once more we entered the garden through the creeper-hung door. We visited the rabbits, and unchained one of the fox-terriers, which had been tied up, Simon told us, as a punishment for eating part of a lace curtain. Bill appeared then and said that his mother desired us to go to her in the drawing-room, and, as it was beginning to rain, Simon agreed that it wasn't a bad idea. We might even find something to eat in there.
As we trooped past the basement window, I lingered behind the others, and peered for a space into the lawless region below. What met my gaze almost took my breath away: for there was our own Mary Ellen, who should have been at that moment cleaning the coal cellar, sitting at one end of the long table, in her new blue dress, and plumed hat, a gentleman in livery on either side of her, and on the table before her, a mug, which, without doubt, contained gin-and-beer!
I waited to see no more. Enough to know that all the world was run amuck! With a glad whoop, I sped after the others, and only drew up when I stood on the threshold of the drawing-room.
Like the servants' hall, it was a large apartment, and, like it, was bewildering in its colour and movement, to eyes accustomed to the grey decorum of Mrs. Handsomebody's establishment.