“Gracious! What shall I do then?” he cried drawing the bath-towel over his shoulders.
“You’ll have to be a statue,” hissed Cheapside the quick thinker. “Hop up on to the pedestal. They’ll never know the difference in this light. When they go by you can come down. Hurry! They’re quite close. I can see their heads over the top of the hedge.”
Swiftly winding his bath-towel about him, John Dolittle sprang up on to the pedestal and crouched in a statuesque pose. The marble group was of Neptune the sea-god and several attendant figures. John Dolittle, M.D., became one of the attendant figures. His hand raised to shade his eyes from an imaginary sun, he gazed seaward with a stony stare.
“Fine!” whispered Cheapside, flying on to the base of the statue. “No one could tell you from the real thing. Just keep still and you’ll be all right. They won’t stay, I don’t expect. Here they come. Don’t get nervous, now. Bless me, I believe they’re English too!—Tourists. Well, did you ever?”
A man and a woman, strolling through the gardens by one of the many crossing paths, had now paused at the edge of the pond and, to John Dolittle’s horror, were gazing up at the statue in the centre of it. They were both elderly; they both carried umbrellas; and they both wore spectacles.
“I’ll bet they’re short-sighted, Doc,” whispered Cheapside comfortingly. “Don’t worry.”
“Dear me, Sarah,” sighed the man. “What a beautiful night! The moon and the trees and the fountain. And such an imposing statue!—The sea-god Neptune with his mermaids and mermen.”
“Lancelot,” said the woman shortly, “let us hurry home. You’ll get your bronchitis worse in this damp air. I don’t like the statue at all. I never saw such fat creatures. Just look at that one on the corner there—the one with his hand up scanning the horizon. Why, he’s stouter than the butcher at home!”
“Humph!” muttered Cheapside beneath his breath. “It don’t seem to me as though you ’ave any figure to write ’ome about, Mrs. Scarecrow.”
At this moment a large flying beetle landed on the Doctor’s neck and nearly spoiled everything.