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Updated: May 13, 2025
Miss Royle began to uncoil. The Policeman was tick-tocking up and down. "The Den's damaged!" he lamented. "Now, who's goin' to pay?" demanded the Piper. "I'm afraid the Bear's hurt," declared the Man-Who-Makes-Faces. In her eagerness to trip Jane, Gwendolyn had utterly forgotten the Bear's Den. Now she saw it a large cage, light in color, its bars woven closely together.
The next moment the Man-Who-Makes-Faces dashed suddenly aside to a nearby flower-bordered square of packed ground over which, blazing with lights, hung one huge tree. Under the tree was a high, broad bill-board, a squat stool, and two short-legged tables. The little old gentleman began to bang his furniture about excitedly. "The tables are turned!" he shouted. "The tables are turned!"
"Here, in the Land of the Lights, I'm the Man-Who-Makes-Faces." The Man-Who-Makes-Faces! She looked at him with new interest. "Why, of course you are," she acknowledged. "Sometimes you make 'em in town." "Sometimes in town I make an ugly one," he retorted. Whereupon he shouldered the hand-organ, grasped the curved knife, and started away.
And saw, moving from one to another of them, in quick darts now up, now down a small Something. She did not instantly guess what it was flitting across that half-darkened sky. Until she heard the wild beating of tiny pinions! "Why, it's a bird!" she exclaimed. "A bird?" repeated the Policeman, all eagerness. "Must be the Bird!" declared the Man-Who-Makes-Faces, triumphantly. It was.
Her cheeks were so puffed, the skin of her forehead was so tight and shiny, that she looked precisely like a monster copy of a sanitary rubber doll! "She can't last much longer! Her strength's giving out." It was the Policeman. And his voice ended in a sob. "She must have help!" this the Man-Who-Makes-Faces. His voice broke, too. But his round, dark eyes were brimming with laughter.
"I know! They're lime lights." These made the shop exceedingly bright. Full in their glare, neatly disposed, were two short-legged tables, a squat stool, and a high, broad bill-board. The Man-Who-Makes-Faces seated himself on the stool at one of the tables and began working industriously. But Gwendolyn could only stand and stare about her, so amazed that she was dumb.
"Just where are we goin', anyhow?" he asked petulantly. "We're going to the Bear's Den," informed the Man-Who-Makes-Faces. "And here's the Zoo now," announced the Policeman. It was unmistakably the Zoo. Gwendolyn recognized the main entrance. For above it, in monster letters formed by electric lights, was a sign, bulbous and blinding Villa Sites Borax Starch Shirts.
"You're rid of me," answered Jane, calling through the weave of the hamper "Yes! But how about Miss Royle?" "We'll send her back too," declared the Man-Who-Makes-Faces. "Here! Where are you?" He ran about, searching. The others searched also through the grass, behind the granite shift, everywhere. Concern sobered each face. For the snake-in-the-grass was gone!
"What's the trouble?" she asked the Man-Who-Makes-Faces. "A Dictionarial difference," he answered, his dark-skinned face very grave. "Oh!" Thomas was shouting once more from where he labored in the lead. "I'll murder him!" he threatened. "This time I'll mur-r-der him!" Murder? That made matters clear! There was only one person against whom Thomas bore such hot ill-will.
Gwendolyn, still doubtful, went forward to greet him. "How do you do, sir," she began, curtseying. His face was long, as the Man-Who-Makes-Faces had pointed out very long, and pale, and haggard. Between his sunken temples burned his dark-rimmed eyes. His nose was thin, and over it the skin was drawn so tightly that his nostrils were pinched. His lips were pressed together, driving out the blood.
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