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comes out of the stone again."
"Yes," said Gerald, "that was exactly the born leader's idea.
"You two go home and tell Mademoiselle that Kathleen's staying at the Towers. She is."
"Yes," said Jimmy, "she certainly is."
"The magic goes in seven-hour lots," said Gerald; "your invisibility was twenty-one hours, mine
fourteen, Eliza's seven. When it was a wishing-ring it began with seven. But there's no knowing what
number it will be really. So there's no knowing which of you will come right first. Anyhow, we'll sneak out
by the cistern window and come down the trellis, after we've said good night to Mademoiselle, and come
and have a look at you before we go to bed. I think you'd better come close up to the dinosaurus and
we'll leaf you over before we go."
Mabel crawled into cover of the taller trees, and there stood up looking as slender as a poplar and as
unreal as the wrong answer to a sum in long division. It was to her an easy matter to crouch beneath the
dinosaurus, to put her head up through the opening, and thus to behold the white form of Kathleen.
"It's all right, dear," she told the stone image; "I shall be quite close to you. You call me as soon as
you feel you're coming right again."
The statue remained motionless, as statues usually do, and Mabel withdrew her head, lay down, was
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covered up, and left. The boys went home. It was the only reasonable thing to do. It would never have
done for Mademoiselle to become anxious and set the police on their track. Everyone felt that. The
shock of discovering the missing Kathleen, not only in a dinosaurus's stomach, but, further, in a stone
statue of herself, might well have unhinged the mind of any constable, to say nothing of the mind of
Mademoiselle, which, being foreign, would necessarily be a mind more light and easy to upset. While as
for Mabel
"Well, to look at her as she is now," said Gerald, "why, it would send any one off their chump except
us."
"We're different, said Jimmy; "our chumps have had to jolly well get used to things. It would take a
lot to upset us now."
"Poor old Cathy! all the same," said Gerald. "Yes, of course," said Jimmy.
The sun had died away behind the black trees and the moon was rising. Mabel, her preposterous
length covered with coats, waistcoats, and trousers laid along it, slept peacefully in the chill of the
evening. Inside the dinosaurus Kathleen, alive in her marble, slept too. She had heard Gerald's words had
seen the lighted matches. She was Kathleen just the same as ever only she was Kathleen in a case of
marble that would not let her move. It would not have let her cry, even if she wanted to. But she had not
wanted to cry. Inside, the marble was not cold or hard. It seemed, somehow, to be softly lined with
warmth and pleasantness and safety. Her back did not ache with stooping. Her limbs were not stiff with
the hours that they had stayed moveless. Everything was well better than well. One had only to wait
quietly and quite comfortably and one would come out of this stone case, and once more be the Kathleen
one had always been used to being. So she waited happily and calmly, and presently waiting changed to
not waiting to not anything; and, close held in the soft inwardness of the marble, she slept as peacefully
and calmly as though she had been lying in her own bed.
She was awakened by the fact that she was not lying in her own bed was not, indeed, lying at all by
the fact that she was standing and that her feet had pins and needles in them. Her arms, too, held out in
that odd way, were stiff and tired. She rubbed her eyes, yawned, and remembered. She had been a
statue a statue inside the stone dinosaurus.
"Now I'm alive again," was her instant conclusion, "and I'll get out of it."
She sat down, put her feet through the hole that showed faintly grey in the stone beast's underside,
and as she did so a long, slow lurch threw her sideways on the stone where she sat. The dinosaurus was
moving!
"Oh!" said Kathleen inside it, "how dreadful! It must be moonlight, and it's come alive, like Gerald
said.
It was indeed moving. She could see through the hole the changing surface of grass and bracken and
moss as it waddled heavily along. She dared not drop through the hole while it moved, for fear it should
crush her to death with its gigantic feet. And with that thought came another: where was Mabel?
Somewhere somewhere near? Suppose one of the great feet planted itself on some part of Mabel's
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