Suddenly both I and Veronica gave a shout together.
"'WONDER YOU'RE NOT DONE FOR ENTIRELY,' SAID THEY, HAULING HIM OUT BY HIS BLANKET AND THE HAIR OF HIS HEAD."
"Veronica! Everybody!" I cried. "We pasted up the windows and doors and forgot to shut the ventilators of the chimneys. Every bit of gas has escaped! All our trouble has been for nothing. And as for your death throes, Mr. H——, well, I don't want to be rude, but it has all been——"
"Bunkum!" finished Willy-Nilly. "Church bells and all, old chap!"
At eve we re-entered the cottage—cautiously at first, then more boldly.
Nothing had happened—nothing at all!
Flies buzzed in hundreds around us as if they had enjoyed the nice aromatic bath they had had. Every scrap of gas had gaily escaped up the wide chimneys. It was two in the morning before we had got the cottage shipshape again, and the breakages and general damage would be hard to calculate.