But Sir Toady went up-stairs to the lumber-room and got an image of some Chinese dragon which had been stowed away there ever since Uncle Peter had been home the last time. And when Polly Pretend's father and mother came to complain of us, he was down on his knees worshiping this false image on the front lawn! Awful, wasn't it? But all the same it would have made you laugh till you cried if you had seen him doing kow-tow to this false god—it was only an old cardboard dragon anyway, like what you see on the Shanghai stamps—and smelling the whole neighborhood by burning brown paper joss-sticks before it, with a penny fire-cracker at every finger-length.
"Doing Kow-Tow to This False God"
He was had up into the study for that, though, because father said he would have no "mockery" about such things. But I don't think he got it very bad, because we all knew by the noise he made that Big Growly wasn't really very mad.
When he is, he goes off and you see no more of him for a long time. He only stops in his den and doesn't growl. That is a good time to keep away and say nothing, till he has done chewing his paws. Only Maid Margaret dare go in then, and even she is wearing out of it—getting too old, I mean.
But about Polly Pretend. Of course she did not pretend to us. First of all, she could not—she knew that it was quite in vain. Children don't try on things with one another. They know they will be seen through. Generally they can see through Grown-ups too, though, bless you, They never know it.
Oh, poor Polly! I was sorry for Polly. Because she could never be natural, but all the time had got to—what is it the book says?—"assume a virtue when she had it not."