He did it
just as though he was idle and wanted to amuse himself. First of all
it was a short, blobby nose, and then suddenly he shot it out
like a telescope, and then out it flew and became thinner and thinner
until it was like a long, red, flexible whip. Like a thing in
a nightmare it was! He flourished it about and flung it forth
as a fly-fisher flings his line.
My instant thought was that Gip mustn't see him. I turned about,
and there was Gip quite preoccupied with the shopman, and thinking
no evil. They were whispering together and looking at me. Gip was
standing on a little stool, and the shopman was holding a sort of
big drum in his hand.
"Hide and seek, dadda!" cried Gip. "You're He!"
And before I could do anything to prevent it, the shopman had clapped
the big drum over him. I saw what was up directly. "Take that off,"
I cried, "this instant! You'll frighten the boy. Take it off!"
The shopman with the unequal ears did so without a word, and held
the big cylinder towards me to show its emptiness. And the little
stool was vacant! In that instant my boy had utterly disappeared? . . .
You know, perhaps, that sinister something that comes like a hand
out of the unseen and grips your heart about.
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