The silence that followed was broken by the sweet voice of Sylvie.
"Would you please let us out into the road?"
"What! After that old beggar again?" the Gardener yelled, and began
singing :--
"He thought he saw a Kangaroo
That worked a coffee-mill:
He looked again, and found it was
A Vegetable-pill
'Were I to swallow this,' he said,
'I should be very ill!'"
[Image...He thought he saw a kangaroo]
"We don't want him to swallow anything," Sylvie explained.
"He's not hungry. But we want to see him. So Will you please--"
"Certainly!" the Gardener promptly replied. "I always please.
Never displeases nobody.
There you are!" And he flung the door open, and let us out upon the
dusty high-road.
We soon found our way to the bush, which had so mysteriously sunk into
the ground: and here Sylvie drew the Magic Locket from its hiding-place,
turned it over with a thoughtful air, and at last appealed to Bruno in
a rather helpless way. "What was it we had to do with it, Bruno?
It's all gone out of my head!"
"Kiss it!" was Bruno's invariable recipe in cases of doubt and difficulty.
Sylvie kissed it, but no result followed.
"Rub it the wrong way," was Bruno's next suggestion.
"Which is the wrong way?", Sylvie most reasonably enquired.
The obvious plan was to try both ways.
Rubbing from left to right had no visible effect whatever.
From right to left-- "Oh, stop, Sylvie!" Bruno cried in sudden alarm.
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